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. The Populist Party, led by William Jennings Bryan, advocated the income tax law passed in 1894, and proposed an income tax in its 1908 platform.
Read more about this topic: Pollock V. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.
Famous quotes containing the words income and/or taxes:
“I had always been so much taken with the way all English people I knew always were going to see their lawyer. Even if they have no income and do not earn anything they always have a lawyer.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“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)