income tax was introduced for the first time in 1850 by
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Answer:
Income Taxes in America
The first federal income tax was created in 1861 during the Civil War as a mechanism to finance the war effort. In addition, Congress passed the Internal Revenue Act in 1862 which created the Bureau of Internal Revenue, a predecessor to the modern day IRS.
Answer:
Income tax is a purely political tax. It serves no economic purpose at all.
Benjamin Franklin, when he was not inventing bifocal lenses and lightning rods, was busy founding the United States of America. He was many, many other things as well but the one thing he is most remembered for, at least outside the US, is his remark that “only death and taxes are certain”.
Actually, not. While he was dead right about death, the certainty of taxes — especially the dreaded income-tax — is quite open to debate. The reason: it hasn’t, as so many people think, been around since the beginning of time. In its present incarnation it is just about 200 years old.
The first time it was imposed, however, was in the 10th century by an optimistic Chinese emperor, who was soon thrown out because the people didn’t like it. The first income-tax in recorded history had lasted for all of 13 years.
Financing wars
After that there was a gap of 800 years — yes, 800 — until someone in Britain thought of imposing it. This was when that country was fighting Napoleon and needed all the money it could garner for financing the wars. But the British are nothing if not practical — once Napoleon had been defeated in 1815, income-tax was abolished the very next year, in 1816.
Things returned to normal and it was not until 1850 that it was re-imposed. The purpose was quite nefarious. Britain had undergone a series of electoral reforms aimed at enlarging the electorate. But the rich were not about to share power with the poor by allowing them to vote. So they imposed the income-tax to disenfranchise the poor — no tax, no vote. This went on for another two generations by which time, thanks to more electoral reforms, it had become impossible to exclude the poor.
Also, Britain now needed money to maintain the Empire. Then came the Second World War and Britain lost the Empire. But now money was needed to pay out dole to the unemployed. So the income-tax stayed on.
The US was a latecomer to this tax. It didn’t start till 1861, and then only because the Lincoln government had to finance the Civil War. But as soon as that war was over, it repealed the tax in 1865, only to re-impose it in 1894, to finance its armies that were expanding throughout the Americas now. It has stayed on since then for exactly the same reasons as in Britain.
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