Tax: Income

Tax: Income

The income tax is determined by applying multi-tiered tax rates based on income (the rates increase as income rises). The income tax as we know it was instituted in 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment overturned the Supreme Court's 1895 ruling that outlawed the policy.

Cry Wolf Quotes

The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.

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Justice Stephen Field, concurs with the majority opinion against the income tax.
05/20/1894 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

I protest against this betrayal of our ancient principals. I protest against this treason to our faith, to our platform, to our traditions, to our heroes. I protest against partial laws, whether they be intended to favor the few or the many. I demand for all men the same equality before the law which they enjoy in the sight of God….I demand now, as I have always demanded, one citizenship, one country, one law, one Democratic faith, one common plane of equality for all the people, without distinction of wealth, of birth, or race, or of creed!

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Bourke Cockran (D-NY).
01/31/1894 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

No honest man can make war upon great fortunes per se. The Democratic Party never has done it; and when the Democratic Party begins to do it, it will cease to be the Democratic Party and become the socialistic party of the United States; or better expressed, the communistic party, or quasi communistic party, of the United States.

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Democrat Senator John Sharp Williams (D-MI).
08/27/1913 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

[In 1981] we, as a nation, finally recognized that it is patently unfair to take more and more from a worker simply because he or she works harder, or longer, or takes more risk, or displays more innovation.

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Reagan Treasury Secretary Donald Regan’s Address to the Business Council, 1984.
01/01/1984 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

Evidence

Backgrounders & Briefs

Taxes Not Seen as Making the Rich Flee New York

Almost everyone agrees that raising taxes on the rich does not induce mass upper-class migration.