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The federal government didn't dare levy a direct tax on the income of average folk until the Founders

Interestingly Congress had considered a federal income tax during the war of 1812 and would very likely have enacted it had that war not ended when it did.

http://www.tax.org/Museum/1777-1815.htm

1815

Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas contemplated the enactment of an income tax to raise up to $3 million dollars for the war effort. He modeled his idea after the income tax Britain adopted in 1799 to finance the Napoleonic Wars. Dallas assumed that such an income tax constituted an indirect tax, and would not require apportionment. The House Ways and Means Committee responded lukewarmly to the proposal, and the war ended before any income tax could be enacted.

Strickly speaking Congress was quite willing to do so, but only under conditions that could make it politically feasible, like the Civil War, when the first income tax acually did take effect and was infact extended several years beyond that war until the electorate turned against it.

Interesting little ditties in history, when one goes looking.

Interesting bit of tax trivia (per Charles L. Adams, "For Good and Evil; The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization"):

In 1814, England abolished the income tax which had been levied in 1799, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was ordered to destroy all copies of the income tax law.

Revenues (excises and import duties, primarily) to the English government were such that the Napoleanic War debt was paid off in short order (I forget how many years, but it did not take long) and the English economy was the envy of all Europe.

In 1894, England reinstituted the very same income tax that had been abolished in 1814. Seems the Chancellor of the Exchequer had kept one copy of the law, and after everybody who remembered how bad the 1799-1814 income tax was had died, Parliament reimposed it.

Coincidentally, the period 1814 to 1894 was the period which became known as the "Industrial Revolution."

Hello? Is there a connection here? Can we learn FRom history?

Also, and perhaps not so coincidentally, the first US (discounting Lincoln's Civil War) income tax was levied by the Congress in 1894. It was declared unconstitutional in 1895, and it took the US LIEberal/Socialist/Marxist Bastard element another 18 years to get the 16th Amendment passed and an income tax implemented in the US.

BTW, I highly commend Adams' book to all of you who are interested in fundamental tax reform. One will not be surprised to learn that a common element of most of the famous revolutions of the people against their governments throughout history have been over/for/about or because of tax policy.

The other common element is FReedom.

Draw your own conclusion.