First, the government and the Wall Street Journal are trying to persuade the Supreme Court to decide this case extremely narrowly after very publicly calling into question the ownership by private homeowners and stockholders of the unrealized gains on their assets thus limiting the ability of owners to borrow against those gains. This is completely unfair because word that this case was pending in the Supreme Court caused those assets to be less highly valued than would otherwise be the case. Justice should be done to all the millions of homeowners and owners of small amounts of stock who never knew that the federal government claimed a power to tax unrealized capital gains or to impose a direct wealth tax. The Supreme Court owes 330,000,000 Americans a clear affirmation of their right not to have unrealized capital gains or wealth directly taxed.
Second, the Constitution requires the rule of apportionment for all "direct taxes" and not merely for "land taxes", which are a subset of the general term "direct tax." A direct tax is a tax that falls straight on an individual and not on a transaction. A wealth tax is such a tax. Taxes which fall on transactions include: tariffs, sales taxes, income taxes, inheritance taxes, gift taxes, and value added taxes. Transactional taxes are indirect and need only be uniform among the states.
Third, the best evidence that wealth taxes are direct taxes are Chief Justice John Marshall's statement to the Virginia Ratifying Convention and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth's statement to the Connecticut Ratifying Convention to that effect. Even Alexander Hamilton, himself, said in his brief for the United States in Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 171 (1796) that:
