“The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy.” Chief Justice John Marshall

In McColluch v. Maryland (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court, the last of the great Founders, said that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” He said it nonchalantly, as if it were not anything anyone disagreed about. The issue in that case was whether a state had the power to tax a federal entity, the Bank of the United States.

But the point continues. The power to tax is the power to destroy. It matters not what the object of the tax is, whether a person or federal entity.

This post’s only job is to remind you of that fact, something that has been recognized and said aloud for a long time.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

For more information on the case, see John Marshall’s Defense of McColluch v. Maryland, edited with introduction by Gerald Gunther (Standford Univ. Press, 1969).

Dr. Mather