![\"taxes\"](\"http:\/\/grumpyseniors.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/taxes.png\")
<\/a>Happy birthday income tax.\nExcuse me if I don’t wish you many more.<\/p>\n
Still, it’s nice to find something older than me that’s still beating people up.<\/p>\n
A good analogy is the 8-pound baby is now 3-tons and a bully.<\/p>\n
And did you know in 1913, the tax code was 400 pages?<\/p>\n
If that doesn’t seem like a lot, try this:<\/p>\n
Last year the tax code was 73,608 pages.<\/p>\n
Now you know what the politicians do in Washington to look busy.<\/p>\n
Actually, my bored-out-of-my-brain research shows, the first income tax was enacted in 1892 to pay for the Civil War.<\/p>\n
Anyone making between $300 to $10,000 a year paid a rate of 3 percent.
\nThat tax ended soon after the war.<\/p>\n
That blows to hell what I’ve been saying for years – there is no such thing as a temporary tax.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I guess they had more sense back then.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I take back what I said about having more sense.<\/p>\n
And just to completely ruin your day – the government will collect just under $5 trillion in taxes this coming year.<\/p>\n
Compare that to $5.4 billion in 1920 and $43 billion in 1945.<\/p>\n
Happy birthday.
\nGimme my present back.<\/p>\n