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Cool data source. Thanks for sharing. In case anyone is curious about the early history of the income tax, or why it is so spotty prior to 1913: The income tax
by mgalka 11y ago
Cool data source. Thanks for sharing. In case anyone is curious about the early history of the income tax, or why it is so spotty prior to 1913:
The income tax was first imposed in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. Prior to that, the government got most of its income from excise taxes and tariffs.
In 1895, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional, since it was not apportioned fairly between states, which is why the government added the 16th amendment in 1913, which gave it the power to impose an unapportioned income tax.
- brobinson 11y agoI still find it baffling that the USA has not had a Federal income tax for about half of its existence.
- mikeash 11y agoFor most of that time, the USA was more a collection of halfway sovereign states than a singular nation. It would be weird for the shared government to reach into the individual states and tax their citizens. The appearance of the federal income tax coincides with the gradual restructuring of the country to be a single strong government with geographical subdivisions.
- jordanb 11y agoDuring that time the US Federal Government was funded through tariffs and through selling land on the western frontier.
- brobinson 11y agoThis is interesting because the federal government still owns a lot of the land in the western half of the country. I saw an infographic recently (sourcing a federal agency's statistics) which said that 48% of California's and 88% of Nevada's land are owned by the federal government.