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 Constitution, were void in effect. The constitutionality of the entire act was also questioned on the ground that it violated the constitutional 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 income of individuals and partnerships derived from precisely similar 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 interested in similar property and business, and the like. These features of the act of 1894, although constituting most important and instructive contributions to the general subject of "taxation," are not, however, so pertinent to the immediate subject under consideration as to require at present any extended discussion.
Conclusion.—As the result of the hearing and discussions involving the constitutionality of the income-tax statute of August 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 property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
longer rent.’ One thing I would say about that 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 1894 (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 difference 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 repeatedly 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."
