Reader's question: Don't tax bills have to start in the House?

People may have noticed that the tax compromise that just passed the House last night started in the Senate (or at least it appeared to start in the Senate) and they know that the Constitution requires that all tax law start in the House. Well, it turns out that the Senate merely added on all the new tax rules to a small tax bill that had previously passed the House. The so-called shell bill was the "Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010." Obviously virtually none of the tax compromise passed by the Senate and the House has anything to do with airports, but it still provided a legal loophole to get things through. Democrats wanted the bill passed in the Senate first so that they could put pressure on the House where they faced much more difficulty in getting the changes through.

The original bill was only six pages (available here). Given how quickly all this was passed over the last couple of days, it isn't even possible to get the text of the final bill yet.