Before the leftists drive me out of Iowa, I'd planned to do my dissertation in income tax history, and began to do preliminary research on what the Founding Fathers meant by "direct taxes." I read the The Debate on the Constitution and discovered that "direct taxes" seemed to be one of those phrases that everybody thought he understood, but that in fact nobody could actually define. At one point during the debate over the limit on federal imposition of direct taxes, one of the delegates actually asked "what is a direct tax?" and the silence was deafening.
The only definitional reference to direct taxation came in one of the Federalist Papers, which historians attribute to Hamilton, in which the author said that direct taxes include the poll tax and taxes on real estate, slaves "and the like." In the Hylton case Hamilton used the same language, except that he dropped "and the like." As near as I can tell the logic behind their definition of direct taxes was simply that direct taxes were taxes imposed on things that the delegates particularly valued: themselves (poll tax), their real estate (mostly land, but buildings too) and their slaves. David Levenstam In a message dated 1/13/03 12:53:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << > In the 1796 Hylton case the Supreme Court accepted Hamilton's view that > the only direct taxes are the poll tax (a tax on heads, not on voting), and taxes on real property and slaves constituted direct taxes. Taxes on other items were indirect. (They didn't use the current distinction that economists often use of direct taxes refering to taxes which the taxpayer pays directly to the government.) > David Levensam Hamilton was incorrect, as was the Supreme Court. There is no logical reason why if a tax on a slave is direct, a tax on a horse is not also direct. If a tax on a house is direct, why not on a carriage? It seems to me that the Supreme Court reasoned illogically that since the 1790s tax on carriages was not proportioned by population, it was thus indirect. I can see the 18th century argument that only a tax on land is direct, as all other taxes ultimately get shifted to rent (cf. John Locke on taxation). But once a tax on slaves and on buildings is designed as direct, then so too must be taxes on a horse and carriage or any other property. Fred Foldvary >>
