478 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Apart from the leading element in this celebrated case, and 

 on which the final decision of the court was mainly based, was 

 that provisions in the act of 1894 establishing an income tax, 

 being in the nature of direct taxation, and the same being not 

 assessed in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Con- 

 stitution, were void in effect. The constitutionality of the entire 

 act was also questioned on the ground that it violated the consti- 

 tutional requirements that " all duties, imposts, and excises shall 

 be uniform throughout the United States." Thus, for example, 

 it taxed the income of certain companies and associations, "no 

 matter how created or organized," at a higher rate than the in- 

 come of individuals and partnerships derived from precisely sim- 

 ilar property; and denied to individuals deriving their income 

 from shares in certain corporations and associations the benefit 

 of the exemption of $4,000 granted to all other persons inter- 

 ested in similar property and business, and the like. These fea- 

 tures of the act of 1894, although constituting most important 

 and instructive contributions to the general subject of "taxa- 

 tion," are not, however, so pertinent to the immediate subject 

 under consideration as to require at present any extended dis- 

 cussion. 



Conclusion. As the result of the hearing and discussions 

 involving the constitutionality of the income-tax statute of Au- 

 gust 28, 1894, the United States Supreme Court, a majority of its 

 members concurring, gave judgment as follows : 



1. We adhere to the opinion already announced, that 

 taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, 

 taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally 

 direct taxes. 



2. We ARE OF THE OPINION THAT TAXES ON PERSONAL PROP- 

 ERTY, OR ON THE INCOME OF PERSONAL PROPERTY, ARE LIKEWISE 

 DIRECT TAXES. 



longer rent.' One thing I would say about tbat is, that if you are going after rent as 

 money, the tax is on personal property, and should be apportioned. But the answer is that 

 the tax does not go after the rent as money in the taxpayer's pocket. The act of 189-1 

 (section 27) specifies the rents as a cardinal part and element of this income return, and every 

 man who goes up to make return has to state under oath what rent he got last year. This 

 fiction this dilference between the name and the thing, between the substance and the 

 shadow, urged by the Attorney General is that, though you can not tax rent, you can tax 

 the money in the owner's pocket received from rent. If there is one factitious argument, 

 one pretense of a reason, one attempt to make a distinction without a difference that this 

 court has uniformly stamped upon with all its might, it is just that. The court has re- 

 peatedly decided that such an argument is wholly unsound. What did the court mean in 

 Brown vs. Maryland, when it held that a tax on the occupation of an importer is the same 

 as a tax on imports and is therefore void ? It is the source, the substance, that the act 

 strikes at, that the court always looks to, and always has looked to, in any form and case 

 that has ever come before it until now." 



