What article in the Constitution gives Congress its power to tax?

Introduction The United States is a government of enumerated powers.  Congress, and the other ii branches of the federal government, can only practice those powers given in the Constitution.

The powers of Congress are enumerated in several places in the Constitution.  The virtually important listing of congressional powers appears in Article I, Section 8 (see left) which identifies in seventeen paragraphs many of import powers of Congress.   In this section, nosotros consider how several of the enumerated powers of Congress under the original Constitution accept been interpreted.

TAXING POWER
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises."  The Constitution allows Congress to tax in order to "provide for the mutual defense and full general welfare." The Court has flip-flopped on the consequence of whether Congress has the constitutional power to taxation in order to achieve regulatory goals that would otherwise be outside of the telescopic of its enumerated powers.  In Bailey vs Drexel Furniture (1922), the Court invalidated a ten% tax on the almanac profits of employers who knowingly use child labor.  The tax, imposed after an earlier try to block the interstate transportation and sale of products produced by child labor was struck down in Hammer, was seen by the Court every bit an unconstitutional attempt to make an finish-run effectually its earlier decision.  In 1925, in Linder v United States, the Court reversed the conviction of a doctor who had given iii cocaine tablets to a patient to relieve an habit.  The conviction, based on a law that imposed a $3 tax on doctors who prescribed cocaine, rested on the theory that the police force limited the prescription of cocaine to the treatment of diseases, not addictions, and that the defendant had given cocaine tablets to an addict.  The Court concluded that the law could survive just equally a revenue measure, and that the Taxing Power gave Congress no authority to regulate directly the practice of medicine--that is, to tell doctors who had paid the required tax what they tin can or cannot do for their patients.

The Court reversed its ban on taxes serving primarily regulatory (rather than acquirement-producing) goals in Steward Machine (1937), which upheld a tax on employers designed to encourage states to enact unemployment compensation schemes.  In Kahriger (1953), the Courtroom upheld a law requiring bookies to annals and pay on tax on all wagers--even though the tax had the regulatory goal of wiping out bookmaking operations and could not exist expected to produce significant revenue.

In perhaps the almost significant taxing ability case ever decided, the Courtroom ruled in National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius (2012) that the so-called "individual mandate" (generally considered a requirement that individuals purchase health insurance) contained in the Affordable Care Act could be sustained as a taxation, even though the requirement was outside of Congress's power to regulate commerce.  Writing for five members of the Court, Chief Justice Roberts held that even though proponents of the Act consistently said a penalization, non a revenue enhancement, would apply to individuals who failed to purchase insurance, it notwithstanding operated as a tax and that a functional assay should control.  The Court noted that failure to purchase insurance required a payment to the IRS, that no criminal penalties attached to failure to purchase insurance, and that the cost of the tax would, in most cases, be less than the cost of buying insurance.  In sum, the law did not get in unlawful to purchase insurance, allowing individuals a choice of paying a revenue enhancement instead.  Roberts also reaffirmed that the Congress may seek to accomplish regulatory goals through its taxing power that it might non be able to achieve under its other Article I powers.  Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas dissented, arguing that the taxing power could non sustain the mandate.

SPENDING POWER
The Congress shall accept Ability To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the mutual Defence and general Welfare of the United States...

In the 1987 case of South Dakota vs Dole, the Supreme Court considered a federal law that required the Secretary of Transportation to withhold five% of a country's federal highway dollars if the state allowed persons less than 21 years of historic period to buy alcoholic beverages.  Southward Dakota, which allowed eighteen-year-olds to beverage and stood to lose federal funds for highway construction, sued Secretary Dole, arguing that the law was not a constitutional exercise of the ability of Congress to spend--simply rather was an effort to enact a national drinking age. In upholding the federal constabulary, the Court appear a 4-part test for evaluating the constitutionality of conditions fastened to federal spending programs: (one) the spending power must be exercised in pursuit of the general welfare, (two) grant weather condition must be conspicuously stated, (three) the conditions must be related to a federal interest in the national program or projection, and (4) the spending power cannot be used to induce states to do things that would themselves be unconstitutional.  The Court considered--mayhap unrealistically--the grant condition to be a financial "inducement" for South Dakota to enact a higher drinking age rather than financial "compulsion" to do then--suggesting the possibility of a dissimilar result if a higher percent of funds had been withheld.  In dissent, Justice O'Connor argued that spending conditions should exist establish constitutional only if they related to how the federal grant dollars were to be spent.

In 2012, the Court considered whether provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which withheld federal funds from states that failed to expand  Medicaid coverage in specified ways, was within the power of Congress under the Spending Clause.  In National Federation of Independent Business 5 Sebelius, the Court held that it was unconstitutional to threaten states with the withholding of all federal Medicaid funding, including their existing funding, for failing to expand coverage in the ways Congress sought to encourage.  Chief Justice Roberts, in a part of his opinion joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan, concluded that federal funds withheld, representing perhaps 10% of a state's unabridged budget, was so substantial that states would have no real option merely to give into Congress'southward demands.  As a result, seven justices agreed that the Affordable Care Human action's Medicaid expansion provisions violated the principle that the spending power tin non be used to coerce states into enacting legislation or participating in a federal program.  The Court distinguished South Dakota v Dole, noting that the funds potentially lost by S Dakota in that case representing only one-half a percent of the state's budget.

THE Holding CLAUSE POWER
The Congress shall take Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations
 respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States....

In 1976, a dispute over nineteen wild burros rounded up on federal land and sold by New Mexico'due south Livestock Lath reached the Supreme Courtroom (New Mexico vs Kleppe).  The Department of Interior argued the New United mexican states's activeness violated the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Human action, while New United mexican states countered that the Act exceeded the ability granted to Congress by the Belongings Clause of Article 4, Section 3.  New United mexican states contended that Congress could regulate only those country actions on federal land that threaten to impairment public lands.  The Court, notwithstanding, rejected this narrow interpretation.  Congress has the power to enact "needful" regulations "respecting" the public lands and--according to the Court---what is a "needful" regulation is a conclusion "entrusted primarily to the judgment of Congress."  The Court concluded the federal government "has a power over its own holding coordinating to the police power" of u.s.a..  The Court did "not recall it advisable [in Kleppe]...to make up one's mind the extent to which the Property Clause empowers Congress to protect animals on private lands."

THE COPYRIGHT & PATENT POWER
...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...

In 2003, the Supreme Court decided Eldred 5 Ashcroft , which provided the Court its first opportunity to interpret the ability of Congress nether Commodity I to extend copyright protection to authors "for limited times."  Eldred operated a website that offered for auction works for which copyright protection had expired (or "fallen into the public domain").  He challenged the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Human action of 1998--sometimes called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" because Disney had lobbied hard for extension of its copyright protection for Mickey Mouse, which was nearing the end of its 75-yr term of protection nether existing copyright police force.  Only put, the argument of Eldred and his many supporters (including librarians and academics who argue that inventiveness will benefit from allowing employ of expired works) was that "limited times" doesn't mean "forever"--and that 75 years of protection is more enough time to provide an adequate fiscal incentive for authors.  Eldred noted that Congress's kickoff copyright deed offered only seventeen years of protection. Past a vote of 7 to 2, the Court ruled in Eldred that Congress did not exceed its power under the Copyright Clause.

The power to protect original works of authorship:
Eldred vs Ashcroft (2003) and other legal documents are accessible from: Harvard's Open Law

Eric Eldred, plaintiff in conform challenging the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
(photograph: ABA Periodical)

Key Constitutional Grants
of Powers to Congress

Article I, Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be compatible throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

 To regulate Commerce with strange Nations, and amidst the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

 To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

 To money Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Money, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

 To provide for the Penalisation of counterfeiting the Securities and current Money of the United States;

 To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

 To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, past securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

 To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

 To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences confronting the Law of Nations;

 To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and H2o;

 To heighten and support Armies, but no Cribbing of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

 To provide and maintain a Navy;

 To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

 To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

 To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Office of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to usa respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Potency of training the Militia co-ordinate to the subject area prescribed by Congress;

 To practise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such Commune (not exceeding 10 Miles foursquare) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, get the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to practice similar Dominance over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall exist, for  the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

 To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the The states, or in any Section or Officeholder thereof.

Article 4, Department 3

 New States may be admitted past the Congress into this Union; just no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other Country; nor any State be formed past the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned equally well as of the Congress.

 The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed every bit to Prejudice any Claims of the The states, or of whatsoever particular State.

Amendment Sixteen
(Ratified Feb 3, 1913.)

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

Questions

TAXING & SPENDING POWERS-- QUESTIONS

1. Does Congress have the power to tax for a purely regulatory, not-revenue raising, goal?  Could Congress require all prostitutes to register and pay a tax if it could not make prostitution a federal criminal offense directly?
2.  Practise the Court's contempo Commerce Clause decisions give reason to think the Court will also tighten up the Congress's use of its taxing and spending powers?
3.  In South Dakota vs Dole, is it clear that Southward Dakota's lower drinking age jeopardized federal interests in the national highway program?  If so, how substantially?
4.  Could Congress condition the receiving of federal dollars to fight law-breaking on a land's having enacted the death sentence?  How--if at all--would such a status differ from the condition upheld in South Dakota vs Dole?
v.  What outcome in South Dakota vs Dole if S Dakota stood to lose all federal highway money if it didn't raise its drinking historic period?  What if information technology stood to lose thirty%?

THE Belongings CLAUSE-- QUESTIONS

1. Does the Property Clause give the Congress the power to protect wildlife on private land that spends nearly of its time on federal state (on national park, national wildlife refuge, national forest, or BLM land)?  Does the Property Clause empower the Congress to protect a grizzly bear or wolf wanders from federal land onto the private state of a rancher?--or is the rancher gratuitous to fire away, state constabulary permitting?
2.  Does the Belongings Clause empower Congress to regulate private activities on private country that adversely effect public lands, such as air pollution from a nearby plant, bright lights from neon advert, or noise from a racetrack?
3.  Does Commodity IV, Section 3 requite Congress the ability to regulate whatever behavior of residents of U. S. Territories that it chooses to, provided no other provision of the Constitution is offended?  For instance, could the Violence Against Women Act provision invalidated in Morrison be enforceable in  U. Southward. Territories (such as Guam or Puerto Rico), even though it can't be in the fifty states?

ackermanwheas2002.blogspot.com

Source: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/tax&spendpowers.html

Share this post