Believe it or not, the federal government operated for about 150 years without an income tax
Imagine opening your newspaper or Web browser and seeing the following headline: “Supreme Court declares income tax unconstitutional.” (Now imagine cleaning up the mess you made after reading this headline and doing a vaudeville “spit take” with your coffee.)
It probably seems farfetched, but America’s court of last resort dropped this very bombshell in 1895.
The legal battle represents just one chapter in the story of the federal income tax, which began in the Civil War era. Congress approved a version of the income tax in 1861 but neglected to set up the actual mechanics of collecting it. An unnamed staff historian for the Internal Revenue Service who researched the income tax’s history several years ago wrote that “the original deadline for filing income tax returns of June 30, 1862, established by this law came and went with no tax returns filed nor any tax collected.”...
