WASHINGTON, DC – Following this morning’s decision at the Supreme Court in Moore v. United States, a case in which the Court considered a challenge to Congress’s power to tax income under the Sixteenth Amendment, Constitutional Accountability Center Deputy Chief Counsel Brian Frazelle issued the following reaction:

The Sixteenth Amendment overruled a notorious Supreme Court decision that wrongly prevented the government from taxing investment-derived income. Today, the Court avoided repeating its earlier mistake.

The challengers to the tax at issue made aggressive arguments that, if accepted, would have hindered the taxation of income gained through ownership of corporations. In a narrow ruling, the Court rejected that challenge.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her concurrence, citing the amicus brief we filed on behalf of law professors John R. Brooks and David Gamage, the artificial limit on Congress’s taxing power urged by the challengers “appears nowhere in the text of the Sixteenth Amendment” and runs contrary to the Amendment’s history.

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Resources:

Case page in Moore v. United States: https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/moore-v-united-states/

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Constitutional Accountability Center is a nonpartisan think tank and public interest law firm dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text, history, and values. Visit CAC’s website at www.theusconstitution.org.