[3] Alexander Hamilton argued before the Court on behalf of the government and claimed that the tax was a valid use of the power of Congress.

Justice James Iredell wrote two days after the event:Mr. Hamilton spoke in our Court, attended by the most crowded audience I ever saw there, both Houses of Congress being almost deserted on the occasion.

"[4] On the issue of judicial review, he wrote, "As I do not think the tax on carriages is a direct tax, it is unnecessary, at this time, for me to determine, whether this court, constitutionally possesses the power to declare an act of Congress void, on the ground of its being made contrary to, and in violation of, the Constitution; but if the court have such power, I am free to declare, that I will never exercise it, but in a very clear case.

[7] In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, overruling Pollock relating to taxes on income from real estate and personal property.

Writing for the majority in the 1916 case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., Chief Justice White explained that the "Amendment contains nothing repudiating or challenging the ruling in the Pollock Case that the word 'direct' had a broader significance, since it embraced also taxes levied directly on personal property because of its ownership, and therefore the Amendment at least impliedly makes such wider significance a part of the Constitution...."[9] In 1916, while presiding over Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., the Supreme Court said: “… the meaning of the 16th Amendment as interpreted in the Brushaber Case,... by the previous ruling it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation.”[10] In 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts cited Hylton v. United States as a precedent for deeming the mandate for individuals to buy health insurance contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010) to be constitutional as a tax.