End Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act

Enumerated powers · passes

Congress has express authority to lay and collect taxes and to set related filing, payment, assessment, and collection rules under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, as supplemented by the Sixteenth Amendment for income taxes. Tolling deadlines and abating interest and penalties for detained nationals is a direct exercise of that tax power, plus the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18.

Bill of Rights · passes

Creates no restriction on speech, religion, press, assembly, arms, search, self-incrimination, trial rights, jury, punishment, or unenumerated rights. It relieves a penalty burden on a defined class under the Sixteenth Amendment tax power and Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, expanding liberty rather than contracting First through Tenth Amendment protections.

Individual liberty · passes

Removes rather than imposes a burden on person, property, and labor by pausing federal tax deadlines during wrongful detention and refunding penalties assessed while the person could not comply. No speech, belief, movement, or property use is restricted, so no compelling justification is even required beyond the tax authority cited.

Decentralization · passes

Federal income, estate, gift, employment, and excise deadlines are exclusively federal under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 and the Sixteenth Amendment. No individual, county, or state can toll federal statutory deadlines or order IRS abatement. The bill keeps decision-making at the existing federal level and does not move new subject matter upward, so it satisfies the minimum-level test.

Due process and takings · passes

Strengthens procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment by disregarding detention periods, requiring State and Justice lists to identify eligible persons, and mandating abatement and refund of interest and penalties that accrued without fair opportunity to file or pay. No property is taken; prior erroneous assessments are returned with a claims program, satisfying just-compensation and non-arbitrariness concerns.