Bronze Enthusiast

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The first direct tax on the income of the US citizen was unconstitutionally imposed by President Abraham Lincoln, August 5, 1861. The tax was meant to finance the Civil War. Executive fiat was employed under the guise of a war emergency. The emergency would justify, according to Lincoln, circumventing the lawful process of amending the constitution. Lincoln's tax was 3% of all incomes of $800 or more. The implementation of this tax was swiftly followed by a graduated income tax which would tax incomes over $5,000 at a higher rate. The tax was supposed to last only during the Civil War but, in fact, wasn't suspended until 1872, eight years after the end of the conflict. Congress claimed, after the war, that the tax was needed to pay for reconstruction. President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the unpopular tax in 1872, an election year. Source is here.
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| Posts: 354 | Location: Louisville, KY | Registered: 06-08-02 |    |
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