It’s amazing the stuff you can find on the Internet while cruising around while bored out of your mind.

I’m not talking naked pictures.

Did you know today is the 100th anniversary of the U.S. income tax code?

How about that?

Happy birthday income tax.
Excuse me if I don’t wish you many more.

Still, it’s nice to find something older than me that’s still beating people up.

A good analogy is the 8-pound baby is now 3-tons and a bully.

And did you know in 1913, the tax code was 400 pages?

If that doesn’t seem like a lot, try this:

Last year the tax code was 73,608 pages.

Now you know what the politicians do in Washington to look busy.

Actually, my bored-out-of-my-brain research shows, the first income tax was enacted in 1892 to pay for the Civil War.

Anyone making between $300 to $10,000 a year paid a rate of 3 percent.
That tax ended soon after the war.

That blows to hell what I’ve been saying for years – there is no such thing as a temporary tax.

Moving to 1894, Congress passed the first peacetime income tax law, but a year later the Supreme Court threw it out, saying it was unconstitutional.

I guess they had more sense back then.

Turns out that was based on a technicality and also the court said Congress had the right to impose a direct income tax and that led to the passage of the 16th Amendment.

I take back what I said about having more sense.

And just to completely ruin your day – the government will collect just under $5 trillion in taxes this coming year.

Compare that to $5.4 billion in 1920 and $43 billion in 1945.

Happy birthday.
Gimme my present back.