Does the collection of income tax violate the Thirteenth Amendment?

Being one that pays all his taxes, I realize more and more, decade after decade, that federal, state and local taxing entities are increasingly manufacturing methodologies to inevitably cut larger and larger pieces of my pie. I cannot help but feel the stranglehold of slavery – literal or not, but definitely realized.

The constitutional arguments of tax protesters aside, could you please give me your insight as to what exactly the Thirteenth Amendment ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States") is intended to actually prohibit? If one cannot live without literally paying for his mere existence, what then does involuntary servitude refer to? If it is not applicable to income taxes, why does not the Thirteenth Amendment prohibit taxing real property? —Mark Alan

SDSTAFF Gfactor replies:

Well, Mark, I'd say the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, is actually intended to prohibit actual slavery. The language about "involuntary servitude" was included to outlaw peonage, or the practice of compelling debtors to work off their debt. In certain southern states laws were then in effect creating a legal framework for such coercion; some of these remained on the books in various forms up through the early 20th century.

You aren't the first person to raise a Thirteenth Amendment argument against taxation, though; everyone who's tried it in court has lost.

According to a 1988 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, involuntary servitude occurs when "labor is compelled by physical coercion or force of law"; it requires what another case calls "personal services." A tax rate that claimed 100 percent of your income might violate some other constitutional provisions – and you're at little risk of such a thing, as the U.S. tax burden is lower (pdf) than those in most of the other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – but being so taxed wouldn't qualify as involuntary servitude because you'd be neither legally required nor physically coerced to work.

(I should point out that there are some circumstances under which work may in fact be legally required or physically coerced. One is written right into the amendment: the state can force you to work as punishment for a crime. Also, according to the Supreme Court, the Thirteenth Amendment doesn't bar "State or Federal Governments from compelling their citizens, by threat of criminal sanction, to perform certain civic duties," such as jury duty or military service; nor does it bar "'exceptional' cases well established in the common law at the time of the Thirteenth Amendment, such as 'the right of parents and guardians to the custody of their minor children or wards,' . . . or laws preventing sailors who contracted to work on vessels from deserting their ships.")

The notion that the Thirteenth Amendment applies to property was rejected in the very first Supreme Court case to interpret the amendment. In the Slaughter-House Cases of 1872, the court addressed a challenge to a Louisiana statute that created a monopoly on keeping and slaughtering animals for food within the city, giving only a state-created corporation the right to do it. The challengers made several arguments against the statute, one of which was that it subjected the owners of such animals to involuntary servitude via their livestock. The court gave this premise short shrift: "To withdraw the mind from the contemplation of this grand yet simple declaration of the personal freedom of all the human race within the jurisdiction of this government . . . . requires an effort, to say the least of it. That a personal servitude was meant is proved by the use of the word 'involuntary,' which can only apply to human beings."

Again, several courts have rejected the involuntary servitude argument, and none have accepted it. It's really a non-starter – clearly the tax laws don't require you to work, but merely require you to pay taxes on your income if you do. (As it happens, the first income tax was adopted in 1861, some years before the Thirteenth Amendment was drafted; if the amendment's authors had wanted it to cover taxation too, they probably could have spelled it out a bit more clearly.)

As you seem to acknowledge, the arguments routinely employed to challenge the constitutionality of taxation are all losers. A bankruptcy court noted in 2001 that it's "well-settled in American jurisprudence that constitutional challenges to the IRS's authority to collect individual income taxes have no legal merit and are 'patently frivolous.'" The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals found all of the following arguments to be utterly invalid:

(1) individuals ("free born, white, preamble, sovereign, natural, individual common law 'de jure' citizens of a state, etc.") are not "persons" subject to taxation under the Internal Revenue code;
(2) the authority of the United States is confined to the District of Columbia;
(3) the income tax is a direct tax which is invalid absent apportionment;
(4) the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution is either invalid or applies only to corporations;
(5) wages are not income;
(6) the income tax is voluntary;
(7) no statutory authority exists for imposing an income tax on individuals;
(8) the term "income" as used in the tax statutes is unconstitutionally vague and indefinite;
(9) individuals are not required to file tax returns fully reporting their income.

Despite judicial rejection of every imaginable antitax argument, the protesters keep trying them anyway. In his recent criminal trial for tax fraud, actor Wesley Snipes dragged out the "861 position" (it's number 5 in the list above), which asserts that the definition of income used in Section 861 of the Tax Code – "Compensation for labor or personal services performed in the United States" – somehow doesn't include wages. It's a stupid argument, and Snipes lost. Although he was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, he still faces fines and possible prison time, and his tax advisers were convicted of felonies.

I always thought that if you didn't want to pay income tax, that was easily avoided--just work in a job that pays so little you don't make enough to be required to pay! Or don't work at all!

Of course, survival becomes a challenge in that case, if you aren't very self-reliant!

I'm sure that's a great argument ... when you're drunk at the bar.

:rofl:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Even had the 13th related to taxation (in which case, why would not taxes on goods also have been covered, given that labor goes into producing and distributing goods?), that part would have been superceded by the later 16th Amendment.

Or do they work from the fantasy Libertarian friendly version?

Amendment 16 - Status of Income Tax Clarified. Ratified 2/3/1913.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Unless someone can come up with a convincing argument why ratified Amendments to the Constitution are not be definition Constitutional I am ready to call this particular question moot. It was in fact questionable whether an income tax was fully consistent with the original text of the Constitution. Which led at least two thirds of both houses of Congress and 75% plus of all states to ratify the straightforward language found above. You have to be squinting pretty hard to believe that this was meant to apply only to corporate incomes or was in any sense voluntary.

"16th Amendment
In 1895, in the Supreme Court case of Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (157 U.S. 429), the Court disallowed a federal tax on income from real property. The tax was designed to be an indirect tax, which would mean that states need not contribute portions of a whole relative to its census figures. The Court, however, ruled that the tax was a direct tax and subject to apportionment. This was the last in a series of conflicting court decisions dating back to the Civil War. Between 1895 and 1909, when the amendment was passed by Congress, the Court began to back down on its position, as it became clear not only to accountants but to everyone that the solvency of the nation was in jeopardy. In a series of cases, the definition of "direct tax" was modified, bent, twisted, and coaxed to allow more taxation efforts that approached an income tax.

Finally, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, any doubt was removed. The text of the Amendment makes it clear that though the categories of direct and indirect taxation still exist, any determination that income tax is a direct tax will be irrelevant, because taxes on incomes, from salary or from real estate, are explicitly to be treated as indirect. The Congress passed the Amendment on July 12, 1909, and it was ratified on February 3, 1913 (1,302 days)."

Some people need to come to grips with the fact that we are not living in the last years of the eighteenth century. Or for that matter the last years of the nineteenth century.

60 years of life or 46 years of 'working'. Back in the 1970's I made a whole lot less than I do today yet paid almost double the rate.