A Brief Timeline of Tax Practices of the United States
W. Marc Gilfillan, CPA, NC, individual and business CPA and Tax expert, shares about the history of taxes…
1861 – After Lincoln was put in office, southerners walk out on Congress and form the Confederacy with a new constitution to check the power of their new country to tax.
1862 – The beginning of US income tax is levied to assist the financing of the rising massive debts of the Civil War. If you’re feeling the pressure with today’s taxes, call a CPA for Tax Preparation in Raleigh, NC for all your tax-related needs!
1872 – The income tax gets struck down.
1894 – Congress creates an income tax in response to complaints that excessive reliance on tariffs pushes up the costs of imported goods for farmers and consumers. Go here if you want help from a modern-day CPA firm in Raleigh, NC.
1895 – The US Supreme Court sustains that the 1894 income tax law is in direct conflict with the US Constitution’s bars on insituting direct tax.
1913 – The sixteenth Amendment is passed and takes that bar away and Congress establishes an income tax system.
1917 – World War I revenue requirements push up taxes, with the biggest rate reaching 77% in 1918.
1924 – Publicating the names of taxpayers and how much they owe fails to achieve the goal of enforcing paying the taxes and the practice is given up.
1942 – Prior to World War II, the income threshold for paying income tax left most working people out. However, the war’s cost bumped the threshold down the income ladder and put the top rate to 94% before the war was over.
1943 – To force compliance from the sharply increased amount of taxpayers, Congress creates tax withholding from wages, effectively turning employers into tax collectors.
In the 1940s Justice Jackson of the Supreme Court, former chief counsel to the IRS, gloated about how honest Americans were in reporting their income taxes. It was an honor system – there were very few informative returns. Open resistors to the taxes were few and the black market was of little significance.
1962 – IRS Commissioner Caplin said “no other nation in the world has ever equaled this record of voluntary compliance. It is a tribute to our people, their tradition of honesty, and their high sense of responsibility in supporting our government.”
1982 – Chief Justice Neely said – “cheating on federal and state income tax is all pervasive in all classes of society; except among the compulsively honest, cheating usually occurs in direct proportion to opportunity.”
Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Timeline of US Tax Policy!
http://www.marccpa.com/
The boring stuff – This article is user submitted and does not reflect the views of this website. This article is educational only and should not be taken as financial advice. To learn more about this topic, please follow the links provided by author the in the article. Links that introduce interesting products to you should be considered advertisements. Some of these links may be of a commercial nature and clicking on them may generate a financial benefit to this website.
Some interesting stuff -
1. A credit repair Book.
2. Start an eBay business.
3. Trading the FX market.
4. A penny stock list.
Related posts:
Leave your response!