I have a friend who thinks there is something fishy about the US Income Tax amendment.
He says he recalls that the version of the amendment sent to the states was not consistent. Something like, one state had a version worded one way, while other states had other wordings.
Can anyone verify whether this is in any way true?
thanks
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the 16th Amendment. What is out there includes a huge number of urban legends, misconceptions, and just plain lies spread by the anti-tax movement.
Go to the TAX PROTESTER FAQ . It’s covers every possible nutty legal objection to paying taxes and demolishes them all.
Searching the Cecil archives for “16th amendment” gives: Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified?
This might have a little something to do with your question. It’s also a very interesting read, IMHO, and I hate law.
From the “Idiot Legal Arguments” webpage :
Note: The argument in “The Law That Never Was” by Benson & Beckman is a 1913 legal memo worked up for the Sec. of State by the Solicitor of the State Dept regarding the ratifications received from state legislatures for the proposed 16th amendment, noticing that several of these notifications contained tiny typos in reprinting the text of the proposed amendment. The Solicitor advised that, as a state could not amend or change the proposed text but only vote for or against ratification, and that the proposed amendment was available to members of all the legislatures in a number of published copies - most without any typos, and it is not known whether these typos existed in the copies seen by the members of the legislatures before they voted (no state govt ever complained that its vote on ratification would have gone different without the typos), and certainly the ratifications of previous and undoubted amendments also had similar flaws, that the notification of favorable ratifying votes is binding on the Sec of State, etc., it is presumed that all the votes were taken on the correct and proper text and therefore the ratifications are all valid and sufficient to adopt the amendment. The Sec. of State agreed. Contrary to the claims made by Benson & Beckman, there is no evidence that any ratification of any amendment was ever invalidated because of some typo in repeating the proposed amendment, and in fact there is a distinct shortage of precedents for invalidating an Act of Congress because of a comparable typo distinguishing the bills adopted by the House and the Senate. The book was dealt with in detail in US v. Thomas (7th Cir 1986) 788 F2d 1250 cert.den 479 US 853, and one of the co-authors tried to revive the rejected argument simply because he had written that book in US v. Benson (7th Cir 1991) 941 F2d 598, both times the court held that the validity of the adoption of the 16th Amendment was “beyond review”.
