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

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

[A federal income tax would be an invitation to D.C.] to invade its territory, to oust its jurisdiction and to establish a Federal dominion [in Virginia]. A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business. The eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house.

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Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Richard E. Byrd.
01/01/1911 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

[A tax on incomes exceeding $4,000 will drive] rich men to go abroad and live.

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Letter to the editor, New York World by Ward McAllister, a prominent figure in high society.
01/30/1894 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

[This tax is based upon] principals as communistic, socialistic—what shall I call them—populistic as ever have been addressed to any political assembly in the world.

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Joseph Choate, a New York Republican, was the an anti-tax lawyer arguing before the court. 1895.
03/07/1895 | 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.