America's first income tax was signed into law by its first Republican president on Aug. 5, 1861. With a massive number of troops mustered in response to the attack on Fort Sumter, the 37th Congress was looking at a $30 million projected budget deficit for the coming year. Its response was the Revenue Act.
Like much modern revenue legislation, the 1861 law was both regressive and progressive at the same time. The bill signed by Abraham Lincoln called for a flat tax rate of 3 percent on net income -- and 5 percent on Americans living abroad. That was the regressive aspect. The progressive feature was that citizens whose annual income was under $800 (slightly more than $28,000 in today's dollars) were exempt. The rates were changed the following year, and the tax was rescinded in the 1870s. It was brought back in the early days of the 20th century, debated all the way to the Supreme Court, and the issue was sent to the states for a constitutional amendment.
By the 21st century, the tradition of Congress taxing the American people was so ingrained in the national psyche (not to mention law and court precedent) that a Supreme Court chief justice, searching for a reason to uphold a constitutionally questionable health care "mandate," solved the legal riddle by calling Obamacare's penalty "a tax." Voila!
Conservatives didn't like it, but in the stroke of a pen, John Roberts confirmed the wisdom of a famous Benjamin Franklin bon mot. It came in a Nov. 13, 1789, letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy. The ailing 83-year-old Franklin had been concerned that he hadn't heard from his friend since the French Revolution had gone off the rails. Writing in French, Franklin provided a brief overview of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and the beginning of America's grand experiment in elective democracy.
"Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes," Franklin observed. "My health continues much as it has been for some time, except that I grow thinner and weaker so that I cannot expect to hold out much longer."
Franklin was right on both counts. America's polymath Founding Father would be gone the following spring. But when we recall his puckish observation about death and taxes, we ought to give the first part of his quote its due -- the one about our "durable" system of government.
Taxes have always played a crucial role in that system, and a distinctive role in the American psyche. Although most of us tend to view taxes as a necessary evil, as a self-governing people we are constantly seeking consensus about how much we should pay, and even who should pay.
John Adams noted in an 1818 letter to a friend that Founding Father James Otis insisted during the revolution that "taxation without representation is tyranny." This line is used today by Washington, D.C., residents agitating for a voting presence in the U.S. Senate.
Nor are concerns about the tax code's complexity new. "The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation," Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, "that would operate with perfect equality."
Fair enough, onetime U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon conceded. But Simon suggested in 1977 that Americans are entitled to "a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose."
As early as 1787, Thomas Paine warned of one natural result of a muscular U.S. foreign policy. Addressing the issue of war, Paine wrote: "It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
Other timeless concerns about taxes include inheritance taxes ("death taxes" in modern GOP parlance) and the Democrats' longstanding "soak the rich" efforts. One defender of imposing heavy taxes on the wealthy was himself a very rich man. In a line that would tickle Elizabeth Warren pink, New Deal-era retail magnate Edward A. Filene quipped, "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."
As for Benjamin Franklin's "except death and taxes" line, Americans initially inferred a linkage between the two: Didn't death end one's obligation to the taxman? That ethos didn't last long, as the taxman turns out to be a naturally rapacious sort.
Another early 20th century Democrat put the best face on this truism with his customary wit.
"I don't see why a man shouldn't pay an inheritance tax," Will Rogers quipped in 1926. "If a country is good enough to pay taxes to while you are living, it's good enough to pay in after you die. By the time you die, you should be so used to paying taxes that it would just be almost second nature to you."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
