Let us not forget that Justice Roberts lied when he wrote:
"The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct tax…”
When Roberts wrote that “The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct tax that must be apportioned among the several States” , he totally ignored the historical characteristics which identify a direct tax as understood by our founders. In fact, the shared responsibility payment is characteristic of a direct tax!
A review of Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, a contemporary writing of the time which our Founders were familiar with, we find the following reference regarding a capitation tax as being a direct tax:
“Capitation taxes, so far as they are levied upon the lower ranks of people, are direct taxes upon the wages of labor.” Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, id. at pg. 540.
The shared responsibility payment is in fact to be levied directly upon the wage earner and computed from annual wages earned, and thus takes the form of a direct tax as understood by our founders!
The fact is, there is a consistency among our forefathers comments that direct taxes are those assessed to the individual by government, while indirect taxes are costs added by government to things which individuals are free to acquired or reject. For example, Hamilton’s brief in the Hylton carriage case which Roberts quoted says: ’The following are presumed to be the only direct taxes: Capitation or poll taxes, taxes on lands and buildings, general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals, or on their whole real or personal estate. All else must, of necessity, be considered as indirect taxes.' In each of the above cases the individual is assessed directly by government.
Additionally, is it not a fact that the shared responsibly payment is proposed to be assessed from a working person’s annually earned wage, which is his/her property?
JWK
If, by calling a tax indirect when it is essentially direct, the rule of protection could be frittered away, one of the great landmarks defining the boundary between the nation and the states of which it is composed, would have disappeared, and with it one of the bulwarks of private rights and private property. POLLOCK v. FARMERS’ LOAN & TRUST CO., 157 U.S. 429 (1895)