I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier or I could have enjoyed my laugh long ago.

You confound the scope of authority granted by the Constitution.  You think Congress et al has unlimited authority and that the People derive their rights from the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Rather, it is the other way around.  The People have unlimited authority and the legal fiction that is our government derives it's authority only when expressly conceived by the Constitution. 

You think that because the prohibition against the taxation of free men isn't explicitly written in the Constitution that Congress has the power to do so.   Conversely you think that:

"Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes"

means Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on anything and everything, whereas it merely grants them the power to lay and collect taxes on what they have authority to lay and collect taxes on.  They don't have the authority to tax free men's labor explicitly, and if not explicitly, not at all. 

Congress undoubtedly has complete and plenary power to tax, but you confuse the authority to tax taxable subjects as the authority to tax all subjects.  The off limits status of exports is not the sole exclusion of taxation, only of Congress' enumerated taxing power.

No, the only taxing authority a legal fiction such as Congress has is to tax the accession of wealth via the privaleged interactions with legal fictions, and then only if it doesn't have the effect of a direct tax.

The The License Tax Cases, 72 U.S. 462> (1866) regard the taxation of liquor and lottery business licenses, both taxable subjects.    That the SC says "It is true that the power of Congress to tax is a very extensive power." does not mean it is a completely extensive power.   Nor does the Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. CO., 240 U.S. 1 (1916) case say the same thing when it says

". . . The provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress..."

for you must not disregard the force of the word possessed.  There are obviously some powers they do not possess.

The License Tax Cases, supra, also say:

"There are, undoubtedly, fundamental principles of morality and justice which no legislature is at liberty to disregard;"

the meaning of which I take to be that our self-evident unalienable rights are to be held in superior regard; that our excersizing our right to earn a common living shall not be taxed.

The License Tax Cases, supra, also say:

"No interference by Congress with the business of citizens transacted within a State is warranted by the Constitution, except such as is strictly incidental to the exercise of powers clearly granted to the legislature."

The power to interfere with an individual's right to contract with other individuals is not a power clearly granted to the legislature.  To so interfere is repugnant to our nation's fundamental principles which are not to be disregarded, supra.

Finaly, your quote conveniently ends prematurely, cutting off the bounding limits recognized by the SC in The License Tax Cases, supra:

"...Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity.  Thus limited, and thus only, it reaches every subject, and may be exercised at discretion.  But, it reaches only existing subjects. Congress cannot authorize a trade or business within a State in order to tax it... "

The tax was imposed on the excise created by the license to do business granted by the state as applied for by the owner (not IMPOSED upon the owner).  Since "Congress cannot authorize a trade or business within a state", it cannot simply impose a tax unless the legal authority is created by the state, and the state cannot impose a tax unless the person applies for recognition by the state, itself a legal fiction otherwise unaware of the person's existence.  

If person A and person B engage in a transaction that does not require to be registered with the state, i.e.- the employment of one by the other to mow a lawn, that transaction does not exist to the state, and the state can impose no authority over a subject that does not exist, just like the government. 

If person B owns a business then sure, person B has applied for a business license and the business becomes the recognized subject, itself a legal fiction.  Person B, however, as the owner of the business, did not have to apply for recognition by the state for his own existance.   He is a natural person.

It is here that we have to explore the distinctions between human to human employment and human to legal fiction employment.  By now it should be clear that Congress cannot tax human to human employment as there is no imposition created by the state over natural persons interacting.  What is unclear to me, and I solicit opinions from both sides, is whether a human contracting with a legal fiction is taking advantage of an excise, the benefits derived thereof being taxable.  I submit because the privalege of being employed by a legal fiction is granted by the state's licensing the legal fiction, there is a taxable subject.

That said, can a person simply become an independant contractor and not an employee?  A bit grayer, but still, an interaction with a legal fiction is involved.  I say there is a taxable subject.

THAT said, one solution would be to let go the privaleges of creating a business and do business as yourself.  Protections from lawsuits, etc. is outside the scope of this subject.  Then only human to human transactions are occuring.

Another solution would be to examine the idea that though a taxable subject exists, that of the privalege to be employed by a legal fiction, the human trades labor value for equal compensation from the legal fiction and no gain exists from which to measure the tax.

Others would argue that you have a zero cost basis for your labor.  Since it is impossible to buy your own labor and "stock up" like a pantry, to be taxed on the accession of wealth derived from your own labor is an unavoidable direct tax.  There is no possible way a human can interact with the world without using mental or physical labor.  Therefore any tax that is calculated on the gain derived from said labor is not indirect, and "to enforce it would amount to accomplishing the result which the requirement as to apportionment of direct taxation was adopted to prevent, in which case the duty would arise to disregard form and consider substance alone, and hence subject the tax to the regulation as to apportionment which otherwise as an excise would not apply to it."  (from Brushaber, supra)

You like Jefferson?  I like him, too!

"Strained constructions... loosen all the bands of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to George Ticknor, 1817. FE 10:81

"The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1808. ME 12:59

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:449

"When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:418

 "If, wherever the Constitution assumes a single power out of many which belong to the same subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it would vest the General Government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On the contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all not assumed." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1814. ME 14:83

"Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:386

"I think it important... to set an example against broad construction by appealing for new power to the people. If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction, [confident] that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction whenever it shall produce ill effects." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:420

"Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825. ME 16:147

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:148

 

--- In legality-of-income-tax@yahoogroups.com, "prof_5string" <prof_5string@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In legality-of-income-tax@yahoogroups.com, "Geoffrey" <gpierce1@>
> wrote:
>
>
> > The right to barter between individuals is extra-constitutional.
> >Nowhere in the Constitution does the People cede authority to the
> >government to govern private barter.
>
> You might want to look at Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, which grants
> the power to tax and which contains no limitation on what can be taxed.
> Elsewhere in the Constitution you will find one, and only one, thing
> that's off limits: exports.
>
> "It is true that the power of congress to tax is a very extensive power.
> It is given in the constitution, with only one exception and only two
> qualifications. Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct
> taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of
> uniformity.  Thus limited, and thus only, it reaches every subject, and
> may be exercised at discretion."   The License Tax Cases, 72 U.S. 462
> (1866).
>
> "I thought at first that the power of taxation [given in the new Federal
> Constitution] might have been limited. A little reflection soon
> convinced me it ought not to be."    -- Thomas Jefferson
>