If papers had clickers you’d click this column
First, a little history about income taxes. (Don’t click yet. It’ll get better.) The first income taxes in the U.S. were imposed in 1861 and 1862 to pay for the Civil War. Rates were raised in 1872.
Then, the courts got involved with direct taxes and apportionment. So, in 1909 Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment, and in 1913 enough states ratified it into law, and — voila! — income tax became part of our Constitution.
Personal and corporate income taxes now are the primary source of government financing. And, ever since 1913 citizens have spent more money on lawyers and accountants trying to avoid the income tax than they pay. Just kidding.
Now for a reason to be happy you have no paper clicker. This is updated from something I wrote several years ago. It’s a twist on an old speech somebody else wrote more years ago — you’re going to recall.
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Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this nation a new tax, conceived in desperation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are fair game.
Now we are engaged in a great mass of calculations, testing whether that taxpayer — or any taxpayer — so confused and impoverished can long endure.
We are met on Form 1040. We have come to dedicate a large portion of our income to a final resting place with those men who here spend their lives that they may spend our money.
It is all together in anguish and torture that we should do this. But in the legal sense we cannot evade — we cannot cheat — we cannot underestimate this tax.
The collectors, clever and sly, who computed here, have gone far beyond our poor powers to add or to subtract.
Our creditor will little note nor long remember what we pay here, but the Bureau of Internal Revenue can never forget what we report here.
It is for us, the taxpayers, rather to be devoted here to the tax return which the Government has thus far so nobly spent.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these vanishing dollars we take increased devotion to the few remaining, that we here highly resolve that next year will not find us in the higher income bracket; that this taxpayer, underpaid, shall figure out more deductions; and that taxation of the people, by the Congress, for the Government, shall not cause our solvency to perish.
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Aren’t you glad you couldn’t click this out? But, I’m sure it doesn’t make you look forward to April 15.
To continue, once Congress got their arms around this income vehicle they began to manipulate it. They upped it to include, not only wages but net personal income, revised it to finance WWI, brought in a marginal rate, then attached the rate to increase with inflation percentages.
Don’t you love ’em? Ain’t no way politicians can get enough of our money. They have to have more, because, well, they try to make us believe, we demand these services. Sad part is, the so-called demanders are not the ones being income taxed.
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A kid swallowed a coin and it got stuck in his throat. A man passing by hit him in the back, and the coin came out.
‘I don’t know how to thank you, Doctor . . .? his mother started to say.
‘I’m not a doctor, ma’am,? the man replied. ‘I’m from the IRS.?