<P> Professor Sheldon D. Pollack at the University of Delaware wrote: </P> <P> On February 25, 1913, in the closing days of the Taft administration, Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania and attorney general under McKinley and Roosevelt, certified that the amendment had been properly ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures . Three more states ratified the amendment soon after, and eventually the total reached 42 . The remaining six states either rejected the amendment or took no action at all . Notwithstanding the many frivolous claims repeatedly advanced by so - called tax protestors, the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was duly ratified as of February 3, 1913 . With that, the Pollock decision was overturned, restoring the status quo ante . Congress once again had the "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration". </P> <P> From William D. Andrews, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School: </P> <P> In 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, overruling Pollock, and the Congress then levied an income tax on both corporate and individual incomes . </P>

What was the 16th amendment to the constitution