Memphis Considers Illegal City Income Tax...
...and the C-A reporter blows the story
According to this story in today's Memphis Commercial-Appeal newspaper, some Memphis city council members want the city to institute a payroll tax on the incomes of people who work in the city. Reporter Blake Fontenay mentions that a similar proposal a few years ago went nowhere after "questions were raised .. about whether the state Constitution gives cities the power to adopt payroll taxes." Fontenay says if a payroll tax was constitutional, "the city would probably require permission from state lawmakers in order to adopt one."

Fontenay is ill-informed and apparently unwilling to do a little extra work to make his story accurate. In addition to reporting from statements by pro-payroll tax city officials and old news clips, he ought to have opened the Tennessee constitution, available online here, and also in the back of the Tennessee Blue Book that no doubt rests in the library of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, and turned to Article 11, Section 9.

A section in Article 11, Section 9, of the state Constitution expressly forbids cities from taxing incomes. It says: "The General Assembly SHALL NOT authorize any municipality to tax incomes, estates or inheritances, or to impose any other tax not authorized by Sections 28 or 29 of Article 2 of this Constitution."

Incidentally, that provision also means that Article 2, Sections 28 and 29, do not authorize the General Assembly to tax incomes, either.