Brushaber V. Union Pacific Railroad - Geographical Uniformity

Geographical Uniformity

The Court in Brushaber noted that income taxes inherently belonged in the "category" of indirect tax (or excise). The court stated that incomes taxes are indirect excise taxes by reinforcing the Pollock decision:

As this conclusion but enforced a regulation as to the mode of exercising power under particular circumstances, it did not in any way dispute the all-embracing taxing authority possessed by Congress, including necessarily therein the power to impose income taxes if only they conformed to the constitutional regulations which were applicable to them. Moreover, in addition, the conclusion reached in the Pollock Case did not in any degree involve holding that income taxes generically and necessarily came within the class of direct taxes on property, but, on the contrary, recognized the fact that taxation on income was in its nature an excise...

Indeed, that had been the understanding with respect to all income taxes until the Pollock decision. The Sixteenth Amendment removed the need imposed by the Pollock decision to determine whether an income tax in any particular case was required to be apportioned, as the Congress could again (after 1913) tax income from any source without having to apportion the tax according to population.