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

[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

[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

When a man has accumulated a sum of money within the law, that is to say, in the legally correct way, the people no longer have any right to share in the earnings resulting from the accumulation.

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John Davison Rockefeller.
07/27/1909 | Full Details | Law(s): Tax: Income

For years now we have moved inexorably toward a larger and larger share of resources being absorbed by government. This has translated into a greatly expanded role for government in business, society in general, and in our personal lives. Obviously, this involvement has carried a price tag—which has translated into fewer resources available for more productive use in the private sector.

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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.