Federal Power & Taxation · A single amendment answering a single Supreme Court ruling
Ratified in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to tax income directly, without apportioning it among the states by population — overturning a Supreme Court ruling that had struck down an earlier federal income tax just eighteen years before.
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.
Sixteenth Amendment, ratified 1913
The Constitutional Problem It Solved
Apportionment made a real income tax nearly impossible
The original Constitution required “direct taxes” to be apportioned among states by population — meaning a state with 10% of the population had to contribute exactly 10% of that tax’s total revenue, regardless of that state’s actual income levels. In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled a federal income tax was a direct tax subject to this rule, making a workable national income tax essentially impossible to administer fairly. This amendment removed that specific constitutional obstacle.
The amendment authorizes the tax; it doesn’t set any actual rates
A common misconception is that the Sixteenth Amendment itself contains tax brackets, rates, or specific rules about who pays what. It doesn’t — the amendment only grants Congress the constitutional power to enact an income tax without apportionment. Every actual rate, bracket, deduction, and rule since 1913 has come from ordinary federal statute, adjusted by Congress repeatedly over more than a century, not from the amendment’s own text.
