The Great Tax Wars

A major work of history, The Great Tax Wars is the gripping, epic story of six decades of often violent conflict over wealth, power, and fairness that gave America the income tax. It's the story of a tumultuous period of radical change, from Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War through the progressive era under Theodore Roosevelt and ending with Woodrow Wilson and World War I. During these years of upheaval, America was transformed from an agrarian society into a mighty industrial nation, great fortunes were amassed, farmers and workers rebelled, class war was narrowly averted, and America emerged as a global power. The Great Tax Wars features an extraordinary cast of characters, including the men who built the nation's industries and the politicians and reformers who battled them -- from J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie to Lincoln, T.R., Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene Debs. From their ferocious battles emerged a more flexible definition of democracy, economic justice, and free enterprise largely framed by a more progressive tax system. In this groundbreaking book, Weisman shows how the ever controversial income tax transformed America and how today's debates about the tax echo those of the past.

Examines the years between the Civil War and World War I as a period of significant change, tracing a rise of wealth and power, the bitter war between the Populists and Progressives, and the birth of America as a global power.

The truth is that the people of the United States are at the present time dominated and driven by two kinds of officially propagated fear: fear of the Soviet Union and fear of the income tax. These two terrors have been adjusted so as to complement one another and thus to keep the citizen of our free society under the strain of a double pressure from which he finds himself unable to escape -- like the man in the old Western story, who, chased into a narrow ravine by a buffalo, is confronted with a grizzly bear. If we fail to accept the tax, the Russian buffalo will butt and trample us, and if we try to defy the tax, the federal bear will crush us. The 60,000 officials who are appointed to check on us taxpayers are checked on, themselves, it seems, by another group of agents set to watch them. And supplementing these officials -- since private citizens are paid by the Internal Revenue Service to report on other people's delinquencies, and their names of course are never revealed -- there is a whole host of amateur investigators. . . Does this kind of spying and delation differ much in its incitement to treachery from that which is encouraged in the Soviet Union?

"Why have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted longer than any others in American history? One view is that the move to an all-volunteer force and drones have allowed the wars to continue almost unnoticed for years. Taxing Wars suggests how Americans bear the burden in treasure has also changed, with recent wars financed by debt rather than taxes. This shift has eroded accountability and contributed to the phenomenon of perpetual war"--

Introduction: This book explores the long history of American taxation during times of war. As political scientist David Mayhew recently observed, since it's founding in 1789, the United States has conducted hot wars for some 38 years, occupied the South militarily for a decade, waged the Cold War for several decades, and staged countless smaller actions against Indian tribes or foreign powers. The cost of these activities has been immense, with important and lasting consequences for the tax system, the economy, and the nation's political structure. By focusing on tax legislation, we hope to identify some of these consequences. But we are not interested in simply recounting statutory details. Rather, we hope to illuminate the politics of war taxation, with a special focus on the influence of arguments concerning "shaped sacrifice" in shaping wartime tax policy. Moreover, we aim to shed light on a less examined aspect of this history by offering a detailed account of wartime opposition to increased taxes.

In War, Wine, and Taxes, John Nye debunks the myth that Britain was a free-trade nation during and after the industrial revolution, by revealing how the British used tariffs—notably on French wine—as a mercantilist tool to politically weaken France and to respond to pressure from local brewers and others. The book reveals that Britain did not transform smoothly from a mercantilist state in the eighteenth century to a bastion of free trade in the late nineteenth. This boldly revisionist account gives the first satisfactory explanation of Britain's transformation from a minor power to the dominant nation in Europe. It also shows how Britain and France negotiated the critical trade treaty of 1860 that opened wide the European markets in the decades before World War I. Going back to the seventeenth century and examining the peculiar history of Anglo-French military and commercial rivalry, Nye helps us understand why the British drink beer not wine, why the Portuguese sold liquor almost exclusively to Britain, and how liberal, eighteenth-century Britain managed to raise taxes at an unprecedented rate—with government revenues growing five times faster than the gross national product. War, Wine, and Taxes stands in stark contrast to standard interpretations of the role tariffs played in the economic development of Britain and France, and sheds valuable new light on the joint role of commercial and fiscal policy in the rise of the modern state.

Excerpt from War Tax: A Complete Analysis and Explanation of Normal Taxes and Special War Taxes Now Imposed by the Federal Government, Including Tables and Examples, Applied to Corporations, Partnerships, Individuals, Etc On October 3, 1917, Congress enacted a revenue law that will bring persons under the operation of the income tax. The new law imposes obligations, in connection with many taxes, upon a very large part of the population not heretofore included in the taxable class; so that practically every person receiving an income must inform himself or herself. Persons failing or neglecting to comply with the law are liable to severe penalties. This analysis of the revenue laws now.in effect, is arranged in a form that will make clear to the taxpayer how the taxes are levied, assessed and collected; when they are due, and how and where they must be paid. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Authoritative and readable, this book is the first historical overview of US federal tax systems published since 1967. Its coverage extends from the ratification of the Constitution to the present day. Brownlee describes the five principal stages of federal taxation in relation to the crises that led to their adoption - the formation of the republic, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II - and discusses the significant modification during the Reagan presidency of the last stage. Brownlee also addresses the proposals made since the fall of 1994 congressional elections under the 'Contract with America' and competing schemes, and he assesses today's conditions for a tax revolution in the light of the national emergencies that have produced revolutions in the past. While focusing on federal policy, Brownlee also attends to the related history of state and local taxation.

A flat tax? Tax cuts? Complete elimination of the income tax? These ideas have most certainly been advocated by members of the Republican Party during the past few decades. Party leaders such as George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich expressed disdain for the income tax and utilized their power to remove it as a revenue source. At the time of the Civil War, many Republicans, mainly in the Northeast, were opposed to the new Federal Income Tax. Initially used to finance that war, the Federal income tax became a hotly-debated issue at a time when America was trying to put back together a fractured nation. The issue split the party, with Midwestern and Southern Republicans wanting to continue the income tax, and Northern and Western Republicans championing its demise. In the end, the anti-income tax wing took control of the Republican Party and shaped its economic principles for the future. The book is an in-depth look into how the Republicans in Congress dealt with the creation of the United States' first income tax and how it affected the party for the future. The author argues that the anti-income tax faction of the Republican Party won the debate and took over the party – and to this day, the Republican Party typically promotes either cutting taxes or eliminating them altogether. The author gives a brief history of the formation of the Republican Party and how they developed their economic views in distinction from the declining Whig Party, who mostly sought to fund the federal budget through tariffs and not by taxing the people directly. The second half of the book looks at the different income tax legislations and how Republicans in Congress responded to them. Each chapter begins with a brief historical context at the time when an income tax bill was being discussed in Congress. The views of Republicans on the income tax were altered throughout the war and its aftermath. In the beginning, Republicans enthusiastically supported the income tax as a measure needed to sustain the fighting. As the war came to a close, however, many Republicans began to change their view. They originally backed progressive rates, then they wanted just one flat tax rate, and, by 1870, many wanted the tax to be ended. There was a divide in the Republican Party, though. Western Republicans wanted to keep the income tax intact while Northern Republicans called for its repeal. The last chapter of the book looks at the Republican Party and the income tax since 1872. Many of the arguments made by current and past Republicans (e.g., George W. Bush, Eisenhower, Elihu Root and even Earl Warren) against the income tax are shown to be the same ones made by many Republicans in the debate over the Civil War income tax. Apparently, the Northern anti-income tax wing won the debate and took over the party 140 years ago.