Tax Protester Sixteenth Amendment Arguments - Sixteenth Amendment Ratification

Sixteenth Amendment Ratification

Many tax protesters contend that the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was never properly ratified (see, e.g., Devvy Kidd).

The "non-ratification" argument was presented by defendant James Walter Scott in the 1975 case of United States v. Scott, some sixty-two years after the ratification. In Scott, the defendant -- who called himself a "national tax resistance leader" -- had been convicted of willful failure to file federal income tax returns for the years 1969 through 1972, and the conviction was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In the 1977 case of Ex parte Tammen, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas noted testimony in the case to the effect that taxpayer Bob Tammen had become involved with a group called "United Tax Action Patriots," a group that took the position "that the Sixteenth Amendment was improperly passed and therefore invalid...." The specific issue of the validity of the ratification of the Amendment was neither presented to nor decided by the court in the Tammen case.

After the Scott and Tammen decisions, two lines of court cases eventually developed. The first group of cases deals with the claims of William J. Benson, co-author of the book The Law That Never Was (1985). The second line of cases involves the contention that Ohio was not a state in 1913 at the time of the ratification. (Ohio became a state in 1803.)