16th Amendment

There was a lengthly political debate in the 1800's about establishing an income tax in the US. There was an income tax during the Civil War, but it was repealed when the war was over. After much debate, an income tax law was passed in 1894, but it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. To remedy that, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913. It specifically authorizes Congress to tax income. It is only one sentence long: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." It is certainly amazing that one sentence could give birth to what must now be billions of words, millions of pages and trillions of dollars changing hands. You might say it was the Big Bang of taxes.