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:
“Some rough political choices lie ahead. Should affirmative action be retained? Should preference be given to people on the basis of income rather than race? Should the system be—and can it be—scrapped altogether?”
—David K. Shipler (b. 1942)
“The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be dictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)