The reason that taxes on income are exempt from the apportionment requirement.....is because the 16th amendment removed that requirement for taxes on income. Exactly as the Eisner court found. You insist that wasn't the 16th amendment but the Flint case. The Eisner court explicitly contradicts you.
Let us look at what the Eisner case really states.
”This limitation [“those provisions of the Constitution that require an apportionment according to population for direct taxes upon property, real and personal”] still has an appropriate and important function, and is not to be overridden by Congress or disregarded by the courts.”
In order, therefore, that the clauses cited from article 1 of the Constitution may have proper force and effect, save only as modified by the amendment, and that the latter also may have proper effect, it becomes essential to distinguish between what is and what is not 'income,' as the term is there used, and to apply the distinction, as cases arise, according to truth and substance, without regard to form. Congress cannot by any definition it may adopt conclude the matter, since it cannot by legislation alter the Constitution, from which alone it derives its power to legislate, and within whose limitations alone that power can be lawfully exercised.
The fundamental relation of 'capital' to 'income' has been much discussed by economists, the former being likened to the tree or the land, the latter to the fruit or the crop; the former depicted as a reservoir supplied from springs, the latter as the outlet stream, to be measured by its flow during a period of time. For the present purpose we require only a clear definition of the term 'income,' [252 U.S. 189, 207] as used in common speech, in order to determine its meaning in the amendment, and, having formed also a correct judgment as to the nature of a stock dividend, we shall find it easy to decide the matter at issue.”
The court then goes on to discuss and elaborate upon the nature of a stock dividend and in so doing writes the following:
”And we are considering the taxability of bona fide stock dividends only. [252 U.S. 189, 212] We are clear that not only does a stock dividend really take nothing from the property of the corporation and add nothing to that of the shareholder, but that the antecedent accumulation of profits evidenced thereby, while indicating that the shareholder is the richer because of an increase of his capital, at the same time shows he has not realized or received any income in the transaction.”
Finally the Court concludes:
“ In so far as this seems to uphold the right of Congress to tax without apportionment a stockholder's interest in accumulated earnings prior to dividend declared, it must be regarded as overruled by Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601, 627 , 628 S., 637, 15 Sup. Ct. 912. Conceding Collector v. Hubbard was inconsistent with the doctrine of that case, because it sustained a direct tax upon property not apportioned [252 U.S. 189, 219] AMONG THE STATES, THE GOVERNMENT NEVERTHELESS insists that the sixteenth Amendment removed this obstacle, so that now the Hubbard Case is authority for the power of Congress to levy a tax on the stockholder's share in the accumulated profits of the corporation even before division by the declaration of a dividend of any kind. Manifestly this argument must be rejected, since the amendment applies to income only, and what is called the stockholder's share in the accumulated profits of the company is capital, not income. As we have pointed out, a stockholder has no individual share in accumulated profits, nor in any particular part of the assets of the corporation, prior to dividend declared.
Thus, from every point of view we are brought irresistibly to the conclusion that neither under the Sixteenth Amendment nor otherwise has Congress power to tax without apportionment a true stock dividend made lawfully and in good faith, or the accumulated profits behind it, as income of the stockholder. The Revenue Act of 1916, in so far as it imposes a tax upon the stockholder because of such dividend, contravenes the provisions of article 1, 2, cl. 3, and article 1, 9, cl. 4, of the Constitution, and to this extent is invalid, notwithstanding the Sixteenth Amendment."
The bottom line is, simply because Congress declares a tax to be a “tax upon incomes” does not make it so. If the tax takes the form of a direct tax, it still requires an apportionment among the state as found in the Eisner Case.
Blithering nonsense. The Eisner case never says any such thing. Again, the reason that pro-rata dividends were not covered by the 16th amendment wasn't because they were 'like a direct tax'. But because pro-rata dividends were not income as there was nothing derived from them. No cash, no property, not even a larger proportion of the company.
As the Eisner court makes ludicriously clear here:
"Throughout the argument of the Government, in a variety of forms, runs the fundamental error already mentioned—a failure to appraise correctly the force of the term "income" as used in the Sixteenth Amendment, or at least to give practical effect to it. Thus, the Government contends that the tax "is levied on income derived from corporate earnings," when in truth the stockholder has "derived" nothing except paper certificates which, so far as they have any effect, deny him [or "her" — in this case, Mrs. Macomber] present participation in such earnings. It [the government] contends that the tax may be laid when earnings "are received by the stockholder," whereas he has received none; that the profits are "distributed by means of a stock dividend," although a stock dividend distributes no profits; that under the Act of 1916 "the tax is on the stockholder's share in corporate earnings," when in truth a stockholder has no such share, and receives none in a stock dividend; that "the profits are segregated from his [her] former capital, and he has a separate certificate representing his [her] invested profits or gains," whereas there has been no segregation of profits, nor has he any separate certificate representing a personal gain, since the certificates, new and old, are alike in what they represent—a capital interest in the entire concerns of the corporation."
Eisner v. Macomber 252 U.S. 189, 206 (1920)
Nothing is derived from the stock dividend. That's why it isn't income. And that's why the it isn't covered by the 16th amendment. With the Eisner court making it equally clear that the 16th amendment removed all apportionment requirements from taxes on income:
"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."
As repeatedly held, this did not extend the taxing power to new subjects, but merely removed the necessity which otherwise might exist for an apportionment among the states of taxes laid on income.
Eisner v. Macomber 252 U.S. 189, 206 (1920)
You pretend this finding doesn't exist in the Eisner decision. Yet the 16th amendment still removes all apportionment requirements for taxes on income. That you pretend otherwise doesn't matter.
As neither the courts nor any rational person is obligated to pretend with you.
If, by calling a tax indirect when it is essentially direct, the rule of protection could be frittered away, one of the great landmarks defining the boundary between the nation and the states of which it is composed, would have disappeared, and with it one of the bulwarks of private rights and private property. POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 157 U.S. 429 (1895)
A ruling from 1895.......which came almost 2 decades BEFORE the 16th amendment lifted apportionment requirements on taxes on income. The 16th amendment was created to address Pollock specifically and remove any apportionment requirements to taxes on income.
Which is exactly what it did.
You lose again.
This isn't rocket science...
