Congress created the standard deduction in 1944 as wartime tax simplification
Evidence
In 1944, as more Americans were taxed to fund the war effort, Congress adopted the standard deduction to simplify administering the income tax and save taxpayers the trouble of keeping receipts. So taxpayers had (and still have) a choice: Take the standard deduction and don’t itemize, or itemize deductions if doing so will lower your tax bill even further. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 181
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The 1944 standard deduction created the itemize-versus-standard choice structure still in force; Wartime tax law shifted compensation toward untaxed benefits and broadened plan coverage — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 357
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The 1944 standard deduction created the itemize-versus-standard choice structure still in force; Wartime tax law shifted compensation toward untaxed benefits and broadened plan coverage — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 357