I'll Drink to That! Reconstruction Revenue Law Finally Slapped Down???
Judge strikes down 158-year-old ban on home distilling of spirits
Judge strikes down 158-year-old ban on home distilling of spirits
(Coincidentally, some of the most ardent Southern Baptist ministers and deacons I knew, who lived through the depression were to their dying days against drinking and selling of spirits. However, I can’t think of a one who was for his family starving. Therefore, they happily squoze corn and sent it north. Some even did some time, but remained upstanding members of the community. Our courthouse once even had a still running in the basement. - DD)
(UPI) - A federal judge upheld a previous ruling that that a RECONSTRUCTION-ERA FEDERAL BAN on home distilling of alcoholic spirits is unconstitutional.
The 158-year-old law was aimed at preventing people from skirting tax collectors when it was enacted in an 1868 law that imposed excise taxes on distilled spirits and tobacco that was challenged by a man who wanted to distill bourbon whiskey at home.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday overturned the law that has barred people from producing liquor in their homes because the federal government does not have the right to use its power of taxation to criminalize at-home distilling, FoxDC5 reported.
“The government contends that this prohibition was enacted to prevent tax evasion because ‘[a] distiller can more easily conceal a spirit’s strength (and thus avoid the proper tax rate) or conceal a distilling operation altogether if his still is in his house or connected with it,” the court said in its opinion.
“Congress’s taxing power ‘reaches only existing subjects,’ not activity that may generate subjects of taxation,” the court said. “Put otherwise…