Do Americans really have to pay income tax? I have been told the 16th Amendment, which authorized the income tax, is invalid because Ohio was not legally a state at the time of ratification. So far I haven’t had the nerve to actually try this argument out on the IRS, but with Christmas coming I could use the extra cash. What do you think, Cecil, is it worth a shot?
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It all started when Ohio was preparing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its admission to the Union in 1953. Researchers looking for the original statehood documents discovered there’d been a little oversight. While Congress had approved Ohio’s boundaries and constitution, it had never passed a resolution formally admitting the future land of the Buckeyes. Technically, therefore, Ohio was not a state.
Predictably, when this came to light it was the subject of much merriment. One senator joshingly suggested that his colleagues from Ohio were drawing federal paychecks under false pretenses.
Get off it, the rationalists replied. The 1953 resolution retroactively admitted Ohio as of 1803, thereby rendering all subsequent events copacetic.
OK, they’re stupid. But great matters have turned on seemingly sillier points of law. It’s not like the Ohio argument couldn’t have been defeated on the merits. One suspects that from a legal standpoint “ex post facto” doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as “retroactive.” And of course the weight of 150 years of history, during which time everyone thought Ohio had been properly admitted, ought to count for something.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
