History
"The use of sales taxes by U.S. states dates back at least to the Pennsylvania mercantile license tax that was initially introduced in 1821, though this and other early taxes were not broad-based. Buehler attributes development of modern state sales taxes to the depression era. He credits Kentucky with the first tax levied exclusively on retailers. The initial tax, passed in 1930, was progressive, but was replaced in 1934 with a 3 percent flat rate tax and then was eliminated in 1936. The current Kentucky sales tax was adopted in 1960. Commerce ClearingHouse credits Mississippi with the first sales tax, in 1930. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia currently impose sales taxes (see Table 1). Twenty-four of the states first levied the tax during the 1930s, six in the 1940s, five in the 1950s, and eleven in the 1960s. Vermont was the most recent state to impose a sales tax, in 1969. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon do not levy general sales taxes."
Read more about this topic: Sales Taxes In The United States
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—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
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—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)