You haven’t ruled out a VAT tax, a tax based on people’s age, height, skin tone or other biometrics besides head-count. You could have a fixed tax based on occupation without regard to a person’s actual income. The ways are infinite to avoid the terms you used. And then you could have very similar taxes that go by different names. Is an ability-to-pay tax based on wealth and income a tax meant by either? Or they could end all taxes and just inflate your money away by printing it weekly based on your income and knock some zeroes off new currency every few years.
They could base the tax on state revenues in progressive amounts and declare catastrophes whenever they need to. They could tax the states 90%, forcing the states to confiscate your property. When the Dems and Reps collude, there is nothing withheld from them that they imagine to do. You just have to bring the Towel of Babel down on all of them and let them play with words as they scatter to the four corners.
A value-added tax will always fall under the category of either a sales or excise tax. - Prohibited by the Amendment. An occupation tax will always fall under the category of either an income tax, excise tax, or a capitation tax. - All prohibited by the Amendment.
Note that in order to enforce a tax, there has to be a statement as to what the tax is based on. So they can name a tax whatever they like (for instance, the “Magoogapuppy” tax) - But in order to extract funds from any entity whatsoever, the law will have to stipulate what the tax is actually based on. Raising hypothetical questions as to what any tax law might be based on is not the same as answering the question as to what a tax law is based on. Without that answer, no taxes can be collected because no collector of the tax would have a basis on which to begin collection. None of your examples fell outside of the tax prohibitions listed.
As far as the States confiscating your property - that’s unconstitutional too. As far as the Congress raising the tax rate on State revenues to 90%, they will no more have the political will to do that than do today to raise the individual income tax rate to 90% on all Americans. In fact Congress will have far less political will to raise taxes that absurdly high against the collective will of fifty State governments than they do now against all individual citizens.
A major point of the Amendment is that citizens and State governments will have a common and calcified goal: keeping Federal taxes low. And that no Congressional representative will be able to survive politically by hurting the interests of his State by voting for excessively wasteful budget bills that will require the States’ Tax Rates to be raised.
UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide,
And let me just add that (regardless of the proposed 28th Amendment): taxes based on age, height, race, etc would all fly in the face of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment – which is why none exist now.
I did not state my rebuttal to your point about Congress raising taxes to 90% on States very clearly. Let me clarify. There is a reason that Congress does not _today_ raise the tax rate to 90% on all American citizens’ incomes. Under the Constitution, Congress certainly has the power to raise the tax rate to 90% on all Americans incomes. But obviously Congress lacks the political will to do this because of how immensely unpopular such a tax act would be. No representative could survive re-election, and the bill would be promptly repealed and tax refunds issued. Under the proposed 28th Amendment, Congress has even less political willpower because now it is taking on not only the political will of the American people who will never stand for such an absurdly high rate of taxation, but in addition Congress is taking on 50 Governors backed by their State legislatures who have a financially vested interest in railing against any such absurdly high rate of taxation.