Income Taxes Pre-Pollock
To raise revenue to fund the Civil War, the income tax was introduced in the United States with the Revenue Act of 1861. It was a flat tax of 3% on annual income above $800. The following year, this was replaced with a graduated tax of 3-5% on income above $600 in the Revenue Act of 1862, which specified a termination of income taxation in 1866. The Socialist Labor Party advocated a graduated income tax in 1887. The Populist Party "demanded a graduated income tax" in its 1892 platform. William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat who supported cooperation with the Populists, was among those Congressional Democrats who advocated the income tax law passed in 1894.. As a three-time Democratic candidate for president, Bryan advocated an income tax and wrote that advocacy into the Democrats' platform in 1908.
Read more about this topic: Income Tax Cases
Famous quotes containing the words income and/or taxes:
“You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations.... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)