The Sixteenth Amendment Repealers

Abstract

The so-called soak-the-rich income tax in the Revenue Act of 1935 led many business people to fear that the government would soon confiscate all private property, and drove a small group of activists to propose a grassroots campaign for constitutional tax limitation as a remedy. They began as a small coterie of rich men around former Congressman T. W. Phillips, Jr., and they came up with the idea of repealing the Sixteenth Amendment because they were fresh from the successful campaign to repeal the Prohibition amendment. They were able to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the policy agenda by crafting it to appeal to state legislators, and by relying on experienced organizers from the tax club movement, who used their networks and expertise to coordinate a grassroots campaign for the amendment in Southern and Western state legislatures.