Posted on 02/03/2015 7:24:16 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The US officially adopted the federal income tax 102 years ago today.
The Supreme Court had ruled in 1895 that the income tax violated Article I of the Constitution, so the amendment was necessary to empower the federal government to impose the income tax.
But the story of the income tax goes back much further than 1913, culminating in some sneaky political maneuvering.
Conservatives — who aren't the biggest fans of the income tax — actually introduced the 16th amendment. They figured it would never pass hoped its introduction would stop liberals from pushing for an income tax as part of a tariff, according to the National Archives and Records Administration.
That backfired, of course.
Income taxes were initially a temporary provision. Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which included a tax on personal income to help pay for the hefty expenses of the Civil War. Without proper enforcement, however, it raised little money. In turn, the Internal Revenue Act of 1862 created the Internal Revenue Service to solve that problem.
The new law levied a 3% tax on individual incomes between $600 and $10,000 (between about $14,000 and $230,000 today) and 5% on greater than that. The act reportedly produced about $55 million in government revenue.
Ten years later, however, long after the war had ended, the Grant administration repealed most of the "emergency" taxes, including the income tax.
Then, in 1894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act revived the income tax, imposing a 2% tax on incomes over $4,000. President Grover Cleveland, in cahoots with Congressman William Wilson (D-West Virginia), originally intended the law to lower tariffs, according to The New York Times. After its introduction, however, the Senate drastically altered it, turning the bill into a high-tariff one.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Vote Republican!
Oh... wait
Is this a bad thread to proclaim that on?
Repeal the 16th Amendment.
The Stupid Party and the Evil Party.
I am a member of the Stupid Party.
.
Actually it is a well proven fact that the 16th amendment didn’t pass.
But the news media all claimed that it did, so here we are.
.
“I am a member of the Stupid Party.”
I don’t believe you. Name one stupid thing you did today.
:-)
Looks like you are not as smart as we had hoped you would be.
Myth 1: The 16th Amendment Was Not Properly Ratified
The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1913, and explicitly gives the federal government the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from any source. Before this, the federal government lacked the constitutional power to collect income taxes.
To become a part of the Constitution, a proposed amendment must be passed by 2/3 of Congress and ratified by the legislatures of ¾ of the states. When individual state legislatures were considering ratifying the amendment, like any other law, each state had to draft a bill and put it to a vote. Each bill contained the full text of the proposed amendment and varied from state to state in spelling, punctuation, or capitalization.
However, the substance of each version of the proposed amendment was identical. Every court that has considered the constitutionality argument of the income tax has flatly rejected it.
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/tax-protest-myths.html
They should take a side trip to Russia....LOL.
Not a fact, and certainly not "proven." Some guy named Bill Benson wrote a book claiming that it wasn't ratified, but Benson went on to serve a long prison sentence for tax evasion.
And you think that makes Benson’s research false?
May your chains...
.
Republicans gave us the Stupid Tax, and the Roe court was mostly Republican-appointed.
The courts stonewalling is not proof of anything.
Benson’s detailed investigation showed that about half of the states that supposedly had ratified it had actually heavily revised it, some omitting large chunks of the proposed text.
There is no honest question but that the “ratification” was a hallucination in reality.
The courts are not imbued with the power to address the propriety of a state’s ratification; it is the purvey of the congress.
Congress never addressed it.
.
I believe that amendment more than anything else changed the nature of this country.
It’s what has allowed the federal government to grow into the tyrannical behemoth that it is today, and to invade the smallest detail of our private lives.
Gee, I thought the two Parties were the Communist Party and the Communist Sympathizer Party.
This story is ridiculous. William Taft proposed the 16th amendment as a way to undercut the Commies in the Democrat party and the western states. It was expected to pass and it did. Check out Irwin Schiff’s “The Great Income Tax Hoax” for the real story.
William Taft was supposed to be the Conservative alternative to Teddy Roosevelt? He did more “trustbusting” than Teddy Roosevelt did. He also promulgated the 16th amendment (largly as a result to the squawking against the excellent Pollack Vs Farmers Loan and Trust decision of 1895).
Almost every founding "father" was an extreme protectionist and the first law signed by President Washington was the Tariff act of 1789.
I think both the 16th and the 17th amendments are equally evil.
What the article fails to mention is that the 16th Amendment was only needed to tax income based on capital, i.e. rents, dividends and interest. A tax on wages and salaries is considered an excise tax and has always been constitutional even before the 16th Amendment.
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