Week in Insights: The Power to Tax Is the Power to Destroy

Curated by Daniel Xu

In McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall held for a unanimous court that individual states couldn’t tax the federal government. He reasoned that the power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Since then, governments have wielded this power through “sin taxes” on soft drinks, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and more. There’s even a federal tax on tanning salons.

Sin taxes aim to discourage individuals from using a good or service and to compensate society for the deemed social ills or costs of that good or service. The tanning salon tax originates from the ...