4 ms·

I still find it baffling that the USA has not had a Federal income tax for about half of its existence.

• mikeash 11y ago
  For 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 ago
  During that time the US Federal Government was funded through tariffs and through selling land on the western frontier.
  • brobinson 11y ago
    This 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.