Brian E. Harriss v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

This Court has held that non-apportioned direct taxes are Constitutionally prohibited and remain so after the adoption of Amendment XVI to the U.S. Constitution ("Amendment"), and that it is erroneous to assume that the Amendment gave Congress the "power to levy an income tax which, although direct, should not be subject to the regulation of apportionment applicable to all other direct taxes." Brushaber v. Union Pacific R. Co., 240 U.S. 1, 11 (1916). This Court reaffirmed this holding in its decisions in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916), Taft v. Bowers, 278 U.S. 470, 481 (1929), and So. Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988). This Court further observed that, in its earlier decision in Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), [we] recognized the fact that taxation on income was in its nature an excise entitled to be enforced as such unless and until it was concluded that to enforce it would amount to accomplishing the result which the requirement as to apportionment of direct taxation was adopted to prevent, in which case the duty would arise to disregard form and consider substance alone and hence subject the tax to the regulation as to apportionment which otherwise as an excise would not apply to it. Brushaber, supra, 240 U.S. at 17. The questions presented are: 1. Did the Ninth Circuit commit reversible and plain Constitutional error by recharacterizing, without evidence, Petitioner's right to refute