Slavery-era tax choices delayed the federal income tax to 1913

Evidence

Though politically palatable, the import tax stunted the bureaucratic infrastructure of the nation, allowing the United States to neglect developing the administrative systems necessary for progressive taxation and government services. The result was the creation of a financially and bureaucratically weak federal government. It was not until 1861, when the bill for the Civil War came due, that the nation was finally forced to establish an income tax and an Internal Revenue Service to collect it (originally called the Bureau of Internal Revenue). The American public, which had never been made to pay income tax, reacted unkindly to this fledgling agency, calling it inefficient and corrupt. After the war ended, so too did the national income tax. Congress passed a modest income tax almost thirty years later, in 1894, but in a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The federal government didn’t acquire the power to “lay and collect taxes on incomes” until 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 542

Categorization

• SEED: A strong article angle: tracing why the US adopted a federal income tax so late relative to other industrial nations, with the slavery-forced import-tax compromise as the root cause.