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News Flash: Pay Your Federal Income Taxes; The Sixteenth Amendment Was Properly Ratified  


Author:  Erik M. Jensen.


Source: Volume 38, Number 04, Summer 2021 , pp.69-78(10)




Journal of Taxation of Investments

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Abstract: 

The idea got around years ago—and it’s still around in tax-protester circles—that the Sixteenth Amendment wasn’t properly ratified and therefore that no legal obligation exists to pay federal income taxes. Wrong! The Amendment process was sloppy, but nothing happened that calls the legitimacy of the Amendment into question, particularly since the relevant officials considered the ratification issues in 1913, when the Amendment was formally adopted.

Keywords: Ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment; tax-resister arguments; “The Law That Never Was” ; Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co.; United States v. Thomas

Affiliations:  1: Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

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