Unfortunately, their constitutional arguments are misguided and would defend hundred-billion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthiest taxpayers in high-tax states.
There is No Constitutional Right to a Tax Deduction
Conservatives are traditionally staunch defenders of American federalism, a form of political organization in which power is shared between state governments and the central (“federal”) government, and each government is sovereign in its sphere of power.
The Constitution grants specific, limited powers to the federal government, and the 10th Amendment reserves to the states all powers not expressly given to the federal government or explicitly denied to the states. Conservatives aim to keep the federal government strictly confined to its proper, limited role, so that as much power as possible is reserved to the individual states.
Although Democrats have now latched onto this argument to claim Congress has little power to collect federal taxes in ways that might affect certain state policies, they have overlooked one little detail—the Constitution expressly empowers the federal government to collect federal taxes, and no power is reserved to individual states to dictate how the federal government ought to go about exercising this power.
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As the Supreme Court explained in Edye v. Robertson (1884), this “uniformity clause” means that a particular tax “operates with the same force and effect in every place where the subject of it is found.”
A unanimous Supreme Court in United States v. Ptasynski (1983) concluded that the uniformity clause is satisfied by any tax that is defined in non-geographic terms. Thus, even if a particular tax imposes a bigger burden on some states—for example, a tax on oil refining income that would hit Alaska and Texas especially hard—it is constitutional, as long as it does not single out states by name for discrimination.
http://dailysignal.com/2018/02/13/d...tutional-right-tax-deduction-heres-itll-fail/
There is No Constitutional Right to a Tax Deduction
Conservatives are traditionally staunch defenders of American federalism, a form of political organization in which power is shared between state governments and the central (“federal”) government, and each government is sovereign in its sphere of power.
The Constitution grants specific, limited powers to the federal government, and the 10th Amendment reserves to the states all powers not expressly given to the federal government or explicitly denied to the states. Conservatives aim to keep the federal government strictly confined to its proper, limited role, so that as much power as possible is reserved to the individual states.
Although Democrats have now latched onto this argument to claim Congress has little power to collect federal taxes in ways that might affect certain state policies, they have overlooked one little detail—the Constitution expressly empowers the federal government to collect federal taxes, and no power is reserved to individual states to dictate how the federal government ought to go about exercising this power.
[clip]
As the Supreme Court explained in Edye v. Robertson (1884), this “uniformity clause” means that a particular tax “operates with the same force and effect in every place where the subject of it is found.”
A unanimous Supreme Court in United States v. Ptasynski (1983) concluded that the uniformity clause is satisfied by any tax that is defined in non-geographic terms. Thus, even if a particular tax imposes a bigger burden on some states—for example, a tax on oil refining income that would hit Alaska and Texas especially hard—it is constitutional, as long as it does not single out states by name for discrimination.
http://dailysignal.com/2018/02/13/d...tutional-right-tax-deduction-heres-itll-fail/
