The Silence is Deafening
Tom Humphrey covers state government for the Knoxville News-Sentinel but it's not clear if he's read the state constitution recently. Appearing on Teddy Bart's Roundtable radio show today, Humphrey asserted that the constitution is "silent" in the issue of a state income tax.

It isn't.

Article 2, Sections 28 and 29 is where the constitution authorizes the legislature to levy certain kinds of taxes. The income tax is omitted. Those who favor the income tax say the silence doesn't automatically prohibit non-listed taxes.

But that's a moot point because of a paragraph deep in Article 11, Section 9, which explicitly lists the income tax as one of a variety of taxes the General Assembly is "not authorized" to allow municipalities to levy. And - here's the important part - the legislature is "not authorized" to empower municipalities to levy taxes on "incomes, estates, or inheritances, or to impose any other tax not authorized" by Article 2, Sections 28-29. Bottom line: cities can't be permitted to levy those taxes because the legislature itself is not authorized to levy those same taxes

Tom Humphrey is wrong. The state constitution is not silent on the income tax. It loudly declares it to be "not authorized."

For more on the issue of the constitutionality of the income tax, click here or scroll down to read the May 12 post Pathetic, Incoherent Lies.