On APRIL 15, 1865, President
Lincoln died. He was shot the night before in Ford's Theater.
On APRIL 15, 1912, the
Titanic sank. It struck an iceberg the night before.
In 1954, APRIL 15 became the deadline for filing
Income Tax returns.
Originally, the U.S. Constitution
prohibited a Federal Income Tax (Art.1, Sec.9), leaving the Federal Government's revenue to be derived from
Excise Taxes on specific items like salt, tea, tobacco, etc., and
Tariff Taxes on imports.
Republican President
Abraham Lincoln passed an emergency Income Tax to pay for the Civil War.
It was
repealed in 1873.
An Income Tax was attempted in 1894, but the Supreme Court declared it
unconstitutional in
Pollock v Farmers' Loan.
Justice Stephen J. Field concurred:
"The income tax law under consideration...is class legislation.
Whenever
a distinction is made in the burdens a law imposes or in the benefits
it confers on any citizens by reason of their birth, or wealth, or
religion, it is class legislation, and leads inevitably to oppression
and abuses..."
Justice Field continued:
"It
is the same in essential character as that of the English income
statute of 1691, which taxed Protestants at a certain rate, Catholics,
as a class, at double the rate of Protestants, and Jews at another and
separate rate."
Get the book, The Interesting History of Income Tax
With World War I threatening, Democrat President
Woodrow Wilson thought
reducing Tariff Taxes on imports between countries would ease tensions and bring world peace.
Wilson proposed replacing reduced Tariff revenue with an
Income Tax on the very wealthy, passed in 1913 with the 16th Amendment.
Originally a
one percent tax on the top one percent richest people,
the income tax was a 'soak-the-rich' tax intended for industrialists
Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor, Fisk, Flagler, Gould,
Harriman, Mellon, J.P. Morgan, and Schwab.
These industrialists avoided the Income Tax by transferring assets into
tax-free charitable and educational foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Foundation.
This tax-free category had previously been for
churches, which
provided social welfare
by founding hospitals, medical clinics, orphanages, schools, soup
kitchens, where they cared for orphans, widows, maimed soldiers,
prisoners, unwed mothers, widows, shut-ins, homeless, juvenile
delinquents, and immigrants.
Churches also helped maintain a
virtuous populace which reduced crime, child abuse, derelicts, and other social ills, which
otherwise are immense financial burdens on State budgets.
Download and listen to 'The History of Income Tax' interview Bill Federer with Phyllis Schlafly on Eagle Forum Live Radio
In 1942, with World War II, Democrat President
Franklin Roosevelt increased and
expanded the Federal Income Tax with "the greatest tax bill in American history," and instituted paycheck withholding.
John F. Kennedy stated April 20, 1961:
"In meeting the demands of
war finance, the individual
income tax moved from
a selective tax imposed on the wealthy to the means by which the
great majority of our citizens participate in paying."
Beardsley Ruml, chairman of Macy's Department Store, became director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank where he promoted the idea of
withholding taxes from people's paychecks.
Kennedy explained, April 20, 1961:
"
Withholding...on wages and salaries (was)... introduced during the war when the income tax was extended to millions of new taxpayers."
Businesses gradually became subject to:
-Higher
Taxes;
-Higher
Wages & Benefits;
-More
Lawsuits;
-More
Governmental Bureaucracy;
-More
Environmental Restrictions; and
-Political
Favoritism toward some companies over others.
Many businesses faced the alternative of
going out of business or
going out of the country.
As jobs were outsourced to stay competitive,
patriotic attachments diminished, giving rise to financial
globalists.
John F. Kennedy noticed, February 6, 1961:
"I have asked the secretary of the treasury to report on whether present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the
flow of American capital to the industrial countries abroad."
Kennedy told Congress, April 20, 1961:
"In those countries where income taxes are lower than in the United States,
the ability to defer the payment of U.S. tax by retaining income in the subsidiary companies provides a tax advantage for
companies operating through overseas subsidiaries that is not available to companies operating solely in the United States."
To remedy this, Democrat President
John F. Kennedy proposed a stimulus plan of lowering taxes across-the-board, as he stated September 18, 1963:
"
A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced Federal budget.
Every taxpayer
and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new
car, a new home, new conveniences, education, and investment.
Every businessman
can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put
it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national
income grows, the Federal Government will ultimately end up with more
revenues."
Kennedy stated January 17, 1963:
"Lower
rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the
levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years
an increased - not a reduced - flow of revenues to the federal
government."
Kennedy stated, November 20, 1962:
"It
is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are
too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is
to cut the rates now...
Cutting taxes now is not to incur a
budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy
which can bring a budget surplus."
John F. Kennedy stated in his Annual Message, January 21, 1963:
"In
today's economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax
reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the Federal deficit - why
reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues...
It
is no contradiction - the most important single thing we can do to
stimulate investment in today's economy is to raise consumption by major
reduction of individual income tax rates."
JFK mentioned in his Message to Congress on Tax Reduction, January 24, 1963:
"Our
tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share
of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for
risk, investment and effort-thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling
our national growth rate."
SPECIAL-BOOK and INTERVIEW - The History of Income Tax
Whereas
Kennedy wanted to reduce taxes to stimulate the economy, an economist,
John Maynard Keynes, proposed stimulating the economy by going in debt.
John Maynard Keynes
reasoned that if the government went in debt spending money in the
private sector to create jobs, those jobs would pay taxes and pay off
the debt.
Unfortunately, politicians were tempted to continually increase debt in order to
funnel money to their districts and constituencies to help them get reelected, hoping the next Congress would be responsible and pay it off.
The
Keynesian debt-stimulated economy has resulted in an unsustainable
$17 trillion National Debt.
On the other side of the world, taxes were used by Soviet Communist
Vladimir Lenin to intentionally eliminate business owners, called 'bourgeoisie', so they could not threaten his centralized government:
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of
taxation and
inflation."
After the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution
in Russia, communist labor and community organizers infiltrated other
countries, including the United States, where they formed tax-free
educational foundations to agitate for political change and a world-wide
workers' revolution.
This resulted in the Federal Government responding by
limiting what tax-free organizations could do politically.
In the style of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Republican President
Ronald Reagan stated in 1988:
"I believe God did give mankind unlimited gifts to invent, produce and create.
And for that reason it would be wrong for governments to devise a tax structure that suppresses those gifts."
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