TAXES: To Limit the Bite

Wyoming started it all, back in 1939. By last week, with Idaho and Tennessee lately joining the parade, 32 state legislatures had followed Wyoming in an extraordinary appeal: Congress should set about amending the Constitution to limit the federal income-tax bite. Many of the "memorials" propose a specific federal ceiling: 25% of an individual's taxable income. Existing constitutional ceiling: none. Maximum under present law: 87%.

The 33 total is highly cheering to advocates of income-tax limitation, because the Constitution says, in Article V, that Congress "shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments" upon request of two-thirds, or 32, of the state legislatures. Nonetheless, for the foreseeable future, the prospects for a tax-ceiling amendment are nil (even aside from the fact that at least seven of the 33 legislatures later canceled their memorials). Most members of Congress are well aware that, while it might make economic sense, drastic income-tax limitation would 1) annoy a lot of voters as a gift to the more highly paid, and 2) cost the Federal Government an indispensable slice of its income. Illinois' Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, a McKinley Republican, has dropped a tax-limitation bill into the Senate hopper, but the proposal is sleeping soundly, and only a loud popular demand—wildly improbable—would awaken it.