# Is it true there's no law requiring income tax? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 26, 2006, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-theres-no-law-requiring-income-tax/362163 "2006-06-26T04:14:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-theres-no-law-requiring-income-tax/362163/41 "2006-06-29T13:41:43Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Also including presumedly, the people who wrote the law but apparently had no idea what it said. They must have been shocked when they discovered that the law they thought they had just enacted to create a national income tax said instead that an income tax was illegal. I was listening to an NPR interview with a congressional aid. In this interview they were discussing a law that had been recently passed (not a tax law). The aid said now that they had passed it it was up to the courts to decide what the law meant. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-theres-no-law-requiring-income-tax/362163/42 "2006-06-29T14:01:43Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > I was listening to an NPR interview with a congressional aid. In this interview they were discussing a law that had been recently passed (not a tax law). The aid said now that they had passed it it was up to the courts to decide what the law meant. With that attitude in our representatives, I bet you could get a law passed typeset in Zapf Dingbats, and no one would notice until it was challenged in court. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-theres-no-law-requiring-income-tax/362163.md?page=2)