How does the government in the US get around the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment when it taxes “rich” people at a higher rate than common folk?
If every one has to be “equal” before the law, how is it that the “rich” have to pay a higher percent of their income via taxes to the government?
Taxes are applied equally to everyone based on their income. There’s no tax for being rich; income taxes are based on income and property taxes are based on property. As long as everyone with the same taxable income, the same type of income, the same deductions, etc. pays the same tax, there is equal protection.
Equal protection would only be violated if the law said something like “White people will pay an additional 15% tax” or something to that effect.
Nice try, incorrect analysis. 
Because the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment has been interpreted to preclude only certain instances of governmental discrimination. The courts understand that ANY law discriminates. For example, a law punishing someone who murders a person discriminates against those who are murderers. If the EPC was interpreted to preclude ANY discrimination among people, then almost no law could be passed. So the courts instead understand that it is only certain types of unequal treatment that the clause is intended to prevent.
IF the basis of the disriminatory effect of the law is a “suspect classification” (such as discriminating against “blacks”), then the law can only be considered valid if there is a compelling governmental interest served by having the law, and then only if the law is the ONLY way to serve that interest. It’s rare for this to be found true (one example: Korematsu, the case heard in WWII over the internment of Japanese Americans). Another example has been cases of affirmative action. “Suspect classifications” include race, nationality, and not much else.
IF the basis of the discriminatory effect of the law is a “fundamental right,” then the above analysis is applied as well. Example: voting rights.
We call this type of examination “strict scrutiny.”
IF the basis of the discriminatory effect of the law is not a protected classification or right, then the law will be found invalid only if there is no rational basis for the law, that is, the government cannot point to a VALID possible reason for the law. So, for example, a law that discriminates between people who are murderers and those who are not is valid because it’s rational for the government to try and stop murder from happening, and no protected class is involved. This level of scrutiny is the lowest possible, and almost never ends up invalidating the law.
In between the two is a level of scrutiny with no good name. It is applied when certain classifications are involved, which are not so “suspect” that they need to be aggressively protected against like “race,” but which need more protection than the somewhat laissez-faire approach of the “rational basis” test. Think discrimination on the basis of gender, as a very good example. Here, the court balances the needs of government with the downsides of the discrimination, in essence. No one likes this test, because it isn’t easy to predict the outcome, but so far the Court is unwilling to apply the “strict scrutiny” test to things like gender because they realize that discrmination on the basis of gender may actually be necessary from time to time.
Having set these three tests out, make a guess where discrimination on the basis of wealth will fall.
There’s an even simpler answer
The 16th Amendment specifically gives Congress the authority to levy an income tax.
There’s no such thing as an inherently rich person: The same person can be poor one day, rich the next, and poor again the week after. So a tax on the rich isn’t a tax against any kind of person. There is, however, such a thing as an inherently black person, or an inherently female person, and the courts are finally getting around to recognizing that there’s such a thing as an inherently homosexual person. So discriminatory treatment against blacks, women, or homosexuals is a violation of equal protection in a way that discriminatory treatment against the rich is not.
Whether embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment or inferred from the Fifth, equal protection is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices. In areas of social and economic policy, a statutory classification that neither proceeds along suspect lines nor infringes fundamental constitutional rights must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
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Defining the class of persons subject to a regulatory requirement–much like classifying governmental beneficiaries–inevitably requires that some persons who have an almost equally strong claim to favored treatment be placed on different sides of the line, and the fact [that] the line might have been drawn differently at some points is a matter for legislative, rather than judicial, consideration.
excerpted from: FCC v. Beach Communications, 508 U.S. 307 (1993)(citations omitted)
Sure, but that doesn’t address the question. The amendment may have given Congress the power to levy an income tax only if that tax did not discriminate against certain groups of individuals.
That’s not the case, as shown above.
And taxes existed long before the income tax. Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.
Those taxes were imposed predominantly on imports and exports, and done so to satisfy various political and financial interests. In particular, the north demanded very high tariffs on imports so that it could launch its own industrial base without being undercut by foreign goods but low tariffs on imports of needed raw materials and on its exports. The south wanted more or less the reverse, with low tariffs on exports of raw material like cotton to make them cheaper to buy elsewhere, high tariffs on British cotton, and low tariffs on imports of finished goods.
Every tariff hurt some and helped others, which is far more discriminatory than a mere graduated tax. No one thought this to be unconstitutional even after the Civil War and the 14th amendment. No denying equal protection under the law meant that the law applied as much to blacks as to whites. Women were still not allowed to vote. That took a constitutional amendment even though the 14th amendment was in place. Equal protection under the law was never intended to mean that effects of a law were cut up into equal slices like oranges to a little league team. It meant something closer to saying that everybody could play in the first place and deal with the effects accordingly.
The fact that they have the authority to levy an income tax does not make it true they have the authority to levy an income tax that would otherwise violate the 14th Amendment. Thus, they could not levy an income tax that taxed “blacks” differently from “whites.”
Except that that has nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s analysis of the issue. After all, there is such a thing as an inherently short person, and yet short people would not be a protected class under the 14th Amendment, in all likelihood.
Further, it can be argued that nationality is not an “inherent” quality any more than income is, yet nationality is a suspect classification.
Additionally, sex and race are both inherent, but are subject to different levels of analysis, as you pointed out above.
Am I missing the main point here? It seems to me that the question in the OP is based on a false premise, in that the higher tax rate is not on rich people, as asserted, but on higher income. Said higher income is potentially attainable by any person, and the tax is not on the person per se but on the income itself. How is the 14th Amendment even relevant?
I’m not trying to dump on the thread, but isn’t this like saying that interracial marriage isn’t a law against blacks, but it simply regulates marriage. Anyone is free to marry someone of their own race so the law doesn’t discriminate; or that gay people are just as free to marry an opposite sex person as straight people are; or as one Justice said that the law prohibits poor and rich alike from sleeping under bridges.
In other words, almost no law directly targets people themselves but relate to actions, and some people are far more likely to engage in a certain action than other people.
I’m sure that the homeless person I saw talking to himself while I was driving to work could one day be a multi-millionaire and that the rich people who live oceanfront in Palm Beach could one day be homeless, but that sure isn’t very likely.
Most likely people will stay in their general income bracket for life, so these income tax rates, while not specifically targeted at certain people, have the practical effect of treating individuals very differently. The op presents a good argument.
This argument is trivially true, in that since the number of people subject to the highest tax bracket is so tiny, obviously most people never achieve it. However, of those who do a surprising percentage of the truly rich - well over 50% according to a thread I read here recently - make it through their own efforts, not through inherited wealth.
The equal protection clause was never intended to apply to taxes. Even the Tax Protester FAQ doesn’t need to demolish these arguments because nobody ever seems to try to make an equal protection case.
The Minnesota House research department has this to say:
You also need to remember that the income tax amendment was passed at the height of the Progressive movement, which called for a progressive tax system (a coincidence using two different meanings of the word). Legislative intent again comes into play. If there had been any thought that unequal tax rates on income would have violated any constitutional principles the amendment could have specifically said so. It didn’t then, and not even tax cranks have tried to make the case in the near 100 years since.
The argument is a non-starter.
I don’t dispute that, but I didn’t limit what I said to the super-wealthy. Take someone making $60,000 and another person making $90,000, and a third person making $20,000. What is the rational basis for taxing those three people at different rates?
I know that the law and court decisions don’t support what I am saying. I also understand what DSYoungEsq is saying that a law against murder would discriminate against murderers, but I don’t see the parallel to this situation.
Murder is a malum in se crime, whereas pursing wealth or happiness is a fundamental right under the Declaration of Independence.
But it also doesn’t mean it forbids it. TSCOTUS has always said that amendments also carry the power to legistalate and ENACT their content.
So it could be argued the 14th amendment doesn’t apply to income tax, or that the 16 amendment changed the 14th amendment in regards to taxation.
This is WHY we had seperate but equal AND the 14th amendment. TSCOTUS ruled it WAS legal to discriminate, if there was a reason for it.
It’s unlikely we’d apply such restrictions but we could. For example an amendment to forbid child labor almost passed but didn’t. It would be unthinkable today to NEED and amendment for the government to regulate child labor, but at one time it did.
Also remember the constitution isn’t what it says, it is what TSCOTUS SAYS it is.
The 13th amendment forbids involuntary servitude, and the draft certainly IS involuntary servitude, but TSCOTUS said, “that wasn’t the intent of the amendment, so that doesn’t count.”
The short answer is because SCOTUS has never heard a case that challenges the progressive federal income tax based on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
I think the simplest answer is why should you interpret it this way. Suppose everyone were taxed exactly 25% of their income, one could then argue that that was unfair because rich people were paying a higher dollar tax. If everyone were taxed exactly $10,000, then poor people would argue that was unfair as they were taxed a higher percentage. Which “equal” do you want; you can’t have both. The equal the collective we has decided upon was equal fairness – quite vague.
Not quite. Start withBrushaber v. Union Pacific
Followed by Tyree Realty Co. v. Anderson, in which the Court examines the argument:
And because the decision was so absolute, the Supreme Court has seen fit to deny most tax cases argued on consitutional grounds ever since.
How is taxing a 100,000th dollar at a certain rate discriminatory? The other people didn’t have 100,000th dollars to tax. Taxes only applying to the people who have the thing that’s taxed is how taxes work, sort of by definition. The person who earned that 100,000th dollar still got to earn so many untaxed dollars, and so many dollars taxed at the lowest rate, etc.
Watch out, in your defense of the Equal Protection Clause – they might use it to make everyone take home the same amount after taxes.