Sixteenth-Amendment
W2 Wages, Cost Basis, and the Asymmetry the Tax Code Won't Explain
The claim that wages aren't 'income' has been rejected by every federal court that's heard it. But buried inside the losing argument is a genuine observation: labor is the only factor of production denied a cost basis. That asymmetry is real, indefensible, and worth understanding on its own terms.
What "Income" Means — and Why a Century of Case Law Hasn't Settled It
The Sixteenth Amendment uses 'income' without defining it. Eisner v. Macomber tried. Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass tried again. Neither fully succeeded. The resulting ambiguity is not a conspiracy — it's a real doctrinal gap with real consequences.
The Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified
Bill Benson's research found drafting and procedural irregularities in the state ratifications of the Sixteenth Amendment. Courts have uniformly rejected the legal conclusion he draws from them.
Brushaber held the income tax is an excise, not a direct tax
Brushaber v. Union Pacific (1916) characterized the income tax as an excise. This characterization is correct, underappreciated, and load-bearing for understanding what the Sixteenth Amendment did and didn't do.
Pollock was never overruled — only circumvented by the Sixteenth Amendment
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan (1895) remains technically good law. The Sixteenth Amendment routed around it without overruling it. This is doctrinally true and partially load-bearing.
Whether Glenshaw Glass expanded "income" beyond the original constitutional meaning
A live academic question: did the 1955 Glenshaw Glass formulation broaden 'income' past what the Sixteenth Amendment originally authorized?
The Law That Never Was
Argues the Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified by the requisite states.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co.
Held the post-Sixteenth Amendment income tax is properly characterized as an excise, not a direct tax requiring apportionment.
Apportionment
The constitutional requirement that direct taxes be allocated among the states by population. The mechanism the Sixteenth Amendment removed for income taxation.
Income
What 'income' means — and doesn't mean — in the Internal Revenue Code, the Sixteenth Amendment, and a century of Supreme Court precedent.