Depressing Chart Shows The Difference Between Income Tax in 1913 and 2015

The Federalist Papers
April 21, 2015

From Chicks on the Right:

Have you recovered from April 15th yet? Let’s hope so, because this chart is mega depressing.

The income tax officially began in 1913 after Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment, and this nifty little chart shows how it has progressed.

There’s more from IJ Review:

The first tax bill came from the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1913. Wilson made the income tax a key part of his electoral campaign (the Republican party platform of 1912 did not mention the income take [sic]). …

Supporters of the new amendment called it “a victory for social justice and reform.” The press, however, openly debated the topic in 1913:

The Philadelphia Public Ledger: “Income taxes give rise to mendacity, to espionage, and to inquisitions that are vexatious, but they have one great virtue: direct taxes bring home… the meaning of taxation and of expensive governmental undertakings with certainty and power”
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat: “This is the most objectionable of all forms of taxes.”
The New York Herald: “Wrong in principle and un-American in Spirit.”
The Springfield Republican: “The Sixteenth Amendment owes its existence mainly to the West and South, where individual incomes of $5,000 or over are comparatively few.”
The Evening Mail: “He has a mean spirit who objects to an income tax.” …

Richard Byrd, the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1913, gave a harsh prediction of what he imagined income tax would become:

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. The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hailed into courts distant from their homes.

Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. Who of us who have had knowledge of the doings of the Federal officials in the Internal Revenue service can be blind to what will follow?