Foundational-Claims
14th Amendment citizenship is the operative status for IRC purposes — the historical dual-citizenship structure does not produce a parallel narrower IRC category
The constitutional history of U.S. citizenship is genuinely interesting: pre-14A there was no clear federal definition, the 14A supplied one, and the Slaughter-House Court (1873) treated the resulting dual federal/state structure as deliberate. Modern alternate-citizenship theory leverages this history to argue for a separate, narrower 'state citizen' status one could occupy while not being a 14A citizen — and therefore not a 'citizen of the United States' for IRC § 7701(b)(1)(B) purposes. The argument fails in modern courts on two independent grounds: Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) treats 14A citizenship as the unitary federal-citizen status surrenderable only by voluntary renunciation, and § 7701(b)(1)(B)'s 'citizen of the United States' has been uniformly construed to mean 14A / INA citizenship. The constructionist seed is real; the modern verdict is foreclosed.
U.S. citizens cannot be 'nonresident aliens' for IRC purposes — § 7701(b)(1)(B) closes the cell by express text
The IRC's definition of 'nonresident alien' at 26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B) requires both non-citizenship and non-residency. The 'neither...nor' construction is conjunctive: a U.S. citizen — by the express text of an Act of Congress enacted in 1984 — cannot be a nonresident alien for IRC purposes, regardless of where the citizen resides. The statutory text forecloses the territorial-volunteer theory at the definitional level, independent of any case-law or administrative-history argument.
Brushaber held the income tax constitutional under the Sixteenth Amendment — not that Frank Brushaber was a nonresident alien
*The Federal Zone* claims that the Supreme Court in Brushaber treated Frank Brushaber as a nonresident alien and limited the income tax to a 'federal zone.' The Court's actual opinion contains neither holding. The case upheld the income tax as constitutional under the Sixteenth Amendment, addressed three constitutional challenges (apportionment, due process, geographical uniformity), and did not specify Brushaber's citizenship beyond a single procedural acknowledgment that 'averments as to citizenship and residence' had been made. The reinterpretation fails at primary source.
'Includes' as non-exclusive: Helvering v. Morgan's settled the question at apex in 1934
The construction rule for 'includes' and 'including' in tax statutes was substantively decided by the Supreme Court in 1934 — at apex, on the merits, citing the Revenue Act's own internal construction rule. The 1934 holding is the apex anchor for what 26 U.S.C. § 7701(c) now codifies. Subsequent re-raisings of the question (the Federal-Zone-style tax-protester line) are routed to lower courts that apply this binding precedent rather than re-examine it.
Brushaber: What the Case Actually Says
*Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co.*, 240 U.S. 1 (1916), is the most-cited and most-misread case in the alternate-tax movement. *The Federal Zone* and its derivatives read Brushaber as treating Frank Brushaber as a 'nonresident alien' and limiting the income tax to a 'federal zone.' The Court's actual opinion contains neither of those holdings. What it contains is a careful resolution of the *Pollock* / Sixteenth Amendment tension that produces the opposite conclusion: the Sixteenth Amendment removed the source-of-income consideration from the apportionment analysis, leaving the income tax operative as a constitutional indirect tax. Layered onto that, the IRC's own definition of 'nonresident alien' at 26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B) — 'an individual who is neither a citizen of the United States nor a resident of the United States' — forecloses the territorial-volunteer reading at the statutory level. The Brushaber reinterpretation fails at primary source.
The Federal Zone Thesis at Its Foundation
Paul Andrew Mitchell's *The Federal Zone* (1992; 11th ed. 2001) builds an elaborate territorial-limits argument on three foundational moves: a re-reading of the Supreme Court's 'three meanings' of 'United States' from Hooven & Allison, a restrictive reading of the IRC's definition of 'State,' and a restrictive reading of the IRC's use of 'includes.' The structural argument depends on each foundation holding. None of the three holds against primary sources. § 7701(c) — the IRC's own construction rule — directly forecloses the central move.
Citizenship and Naturalization: The Constitutional Structure
U.S. citizenship before the Fourteenth Amendment was a contested category — the Constitution did not define it, Congress had not defined it by statute, and *Dred Scott* had held that some people born on U.S. soil could not be citizens. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, supplied the definition: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' That single sentence created the dual federal/state structure modern citizenship operates under. The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) treated the structure as deliberate. 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(23) defines 'naturalization' broadly — 'the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, by any means whatsoever' — language that has carried doctrinal weight in some directions and not in others. This concept page lays out the structure; the operative-status question for federal-statute purposes is treated in a paired finding.
'Nonresident Alien' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(b)(1)(B) defines 'nonresident alien' as 'an individual who is neither a citizen of the United States nor a resident of the United States.' The definition has two requirements, both necessary: non-citizenship and non-residency. A U.S. citizen — by the express text of an Act of Congress enacted in 1984 — cannot be a nonresident alien for IRC purposes. This single sentence forecloses the territorial-volunteer reading that *The Federal Zone* and its derivatives depend on.
The Citizen/Alien × Resident/Nonresident Matrix
The IRC distinguishes individual taxpayers along two axes: U.S. citizenship (citizen vs. alien) and U.S. residence (resident vs. nonresident). The four resulting cells map onto real Code sections with distinct tax bases — citizens and resident aliens taxed worldwide under § 1, nonresident aliens taxed on U.S.-source / effectively-connected income under § 871. The Matrix is real; what the alternate-tax movement adds — moving U.S. citizens in the fifty states into the nonresident-alien cell — is not in the Matrix.
'Includes' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(c) is the IRC's own rule for how the words 'includes' and 'including' should be read in IRC definitions. The rule says the listed items do not exclude other things within the ordinary meaning of the defined term. This single sentence forecloses the restrictive-includes reading on which a substantial part of alternate-tax theory depends.
'State' in the Internal Revenue Code
26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(10) defines 'State' to include the District of Columbia. The use of 'include' rather than 'mean' has been read in alternate-tax theory as restricting the term to D.C. and federal possessions, excluding the fifty states. Read in tandem with § 7701(c) — the IRC's own construction rule — that reading is foreclosed: 'includes' is non-exclusive, and the fifty states remain within the ordinary meaning of 'State.'
The Three Meanings of 'United States'
The Supreme Court in Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt (1945) recognized that the term 'United States' can carry one of three distinct senses. The observation is real and analytically useful — but it is regularly misread in alternate-tax theory as authority that the term means only the federal territory in tax statutes. The case says nothing of the kind.
Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius
A common-law canon of statutory construction: 'the express mention of one thing excludes others.' The canon raises a defeasible presumption that items not listed in a statute are excluded from its reach. It is genuinely ancient, genuinely operative in U.S. statutory interpretation, and frequently invoked in alternate-tax theory — most often without acknowledging the canon's well-mapped limits or the express statutory overrides that Congress regularly enacts.