Question

In one paragraph, summarize the Sixteenth Amendment and describe the change it creates.

Answer 1

The Sixteenth Amendment (ratified 1913) gives Congress the power to impose taxes on incomes "from whatever source derived" without having to apportion those taxes among the states or base them on the census, thereby overturning prior limits that treated income taxes as direct taxes requiring apportionment (as interpreted in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.). The change it creates is to authorize a federal income tax system that applies nationwide and to all forms of income without the constitutional apportionment rule that had effectively blocked such a tax.