16th Amendment
About 16th Amendment
The 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1913, gave Congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes without apportionment among the states. This overturned the Supreme Court decision in Pollock v Farmers Loan and Trust Co, which had struck down the 1894 income tax as unconstitutional. The amendment was proposed by Senator Norris Brown in 1909 and ratified by 42 states. The Revenue Act of 1913 implemented the first permanent peacetime income tax, with rates from 1 percent on incomes over 3,000 to 7 percent on incomes over 500,000. The income tax became the primary source of federal revenue, growing from 28 million in 1914 to over 1 trillion annually by the 21st century.
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