wasn't the income tax presented to the public as a "temporary" tax during wartime?
The original income tax was written into law in 1862 by none other than Abraham Lincoln in order to finance the War between the States.
Only people who made 800 dollars a year or more (roughly 1% of the population at that time) were affected.
Ultimately Lincoln ended up having to borrow from foreign lenders to finance the Civil War.
And yes, it was supposed to be temporary.
And it was... kinda.
But by the 1890's the move to bring back the income tax in order to redistribute wealth away from the robber barons of that time returned.
By 1894 the pro-tax movement succeeded in passing a 2% tax on all personal and corporate net income over 4,000 dollars.
The rich, of course, fought back and by 1895 that tax law was declared "unconstitutional" despite the fact that the constitution allows fer taxation "to pay the debts and provide for the common welfare of the United States".
The left liked the idea of a progressive tax and the right, of course, opposed it.
By 1908 outgoing president Teddy Roosevelt broke with his party by supporting both an income tax and an inheritance tax but he could not sign either into law.
Taft, elected in 1908 in a pro-tax fervor wrote the 16th ammendment into law making personal income tax definitively and specifically consitutional.
By 1913 26 states had ratified the 16th ammendment and by October of that year POTUS Woody Wilson signed the first modern income tax bill into law.
The tax code was simple in 1913 (16 pages). A 1% tax on all income over 3,000 for a single person and 4,000 for a married person with a "super tax" of 6% fer people making over 500,000 a year.
This tax was popular with almost everyone cos almost no one had to pay it.
America's entry into WWI in 1917 changed everything. The federal budget went from 1 billion in 1916 to 19 billion by 1919.
Now the majority of the country was paying taxes most fer the first time ever.
The IRS had 4,000 workers in 1913 and by 1921 had 21,300.
The top tax rate by this point had mushroomed with people making over a million a year paying a heady 77%.
Governmental spending went up as their income from the new tax system blossomed from 344 million before the war to 5.4 billion after the war.
And yes there was talk that the tax was supposed to be a temporary war time measure but after the war they merely cut the tax rate five times without eliminating it.
In the dirty thirties when people were mostly broke it declined again.
Ecce WWII.
In 1940 tax income to the government was 9.6 billion and by 1945 it was 95 billion.
The IRS doubles in size in terms of employees from 1941 to 1945.
Almost everybody paid taxes by this point and it was then that the government got the idea of withholding payroll taxes so they wouldn't have to wait till the end of the year to get paid.
Today the IRS are the worlds largest law enforcemnent agency with moe than 115,000 employees.
The once 16 page tax code has turned into a behemouth 19,000 pages that is barely understood even by the people who write it.
Temporary?
Try certain.
Death and taxes.
Be Well.
