income tax — Bunk History

Tax Season and the Making of the American Fiscal State

As Americans file their taxes this tax season, the Trump administration threatens to unravel the modern fiscal state.

by John Fabian Witt, Ajay K. Mehrotra via Made By History on April 16, 2025

Political cartoon showing a dog named 'income tax' running from a can called "supreme court decisions."

No, President Trump, the Income Tax Wasn’t A Mistake. But It Was an Accident.

Trump claimed that the income tax was passed for “reasons unknown to mankind” and caused the Great Depression. Here’s the real history.

by Jesse Eisinger via ProPublica on April 8, 2025

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé.

Slouching Towards Tax Day

How did taxes become something we "do"?

by Brian Domitrovic via Law & Liberty on April 15, 2024

War tax alternate fund information form.

Death and Taxes

The long history and contemporary relevance of war tax resistance.

by Tyler McBrien via Protean on April 15, 2024

Cleveland-Stevenson Tariff Reform Portrait Handkerchief

Tax Regimes

Historian Robin Einhorn reflects on Americans’ complicated relationship to taxes, from the colonial period through the Civil War to the tax revolts of the 1980s.

by Robin Einhorn, Noam Maggor via Phenomenal World on March 24, 2022

Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan

American Populists Used to Run Against Tariffs. It Could Happen Again.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.

by Tony Annett via Washington Post on April 9, 2025

Hand throwing crumpled dollar bills into pile

Extravagances of Neoliberalism

On how the fringe ideas of a set of American neoliberals became a new and pervasive way of life.

by Melinda Cooper, Benjamin Kunkel via The Baffler on May 13, 2024

American flag sign that reads "NWRO," "I support a guaranteed adequate income for all Americans"

Escape from the Market

Far from spelling the end of anti-market politics, basic income proposals are one place where it can and has flourished.

by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on May 19, 2023

Political cartoon of the Lincoln Administration, reading "Running the 'Machine'", 1864.

Blues, Grays & Greenbacks

How Lincoln's administration financed the Civil War and transformed the nation's decentralized economy into the global juggernaut of the postwar centuries.

by Nicholas Guyatt via New York Review of Books on May 4, 2023

Graph of tax rates on top marginal earned income vs. long term capital gains, 1918-2020.

Why Is Wealth White?

In the 20th century, a moral economy of “whites-only” wealth animated federal policies and programs that created the propertied white middle class.

by Julia Ott via Southern Cultures on January 30, 2023

Federal Reserve Note featuring Salmon Chase held by the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History

The War with Inflation and the Confederacy

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration demonstrated that a progressive agenda and effective anti-inflationary measures could overlap.

by Andrew Donnelly via Public Books on September 20, 2022

Joe Biden signing a document

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Exposes Our Allergy to Taxes

The rise of a new tax politics has made it harder to address our problems, and now it threatens democracy, too.

by Molly Michelmore via Made By History on August 19, 2022

John D. Rockefeller Jr., right, was the country's biggest taxpayer in 1923, when public disclosure of tax payments was required by law. President Calvin Coolidge, left, pushed Congress to repeal the disclosure law in 1926. This photo was taken in 1925.

Americans’ Taxes Used To Be Public — Until the Rich Revolted

Thanks to the efforts of wealthy taxpayers, the "big reveal" of the 1920s was extremely short-lived.

by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on April 18, 2022

Painting of people on a fishing boat

A Cosmic Lie

A conversation about "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World."

by Peter S. Goodman, Lewis H. Lapham via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 4, 2022

A political cartoon lampooning the “robber baron” monopolists’ exploitation of laborers, 1883

When Americans Liked Taxes

The idea of liberty has often seemed to mean freedom from government and its spending. But there is an alternate history, one just as foundational and defining.

by Gary Gerstle via New York Review of Books on February 23, 2022

We Can’t Blame the South Alone for Anti-Tax Austerity Politics

The legacy of slavery is often invoked to explain the stunted welfare state. But the strongest resistance to taxation and redistribution came from the Northern ruling class.

by Noam Maggor via Jacobin on November 15, 2021

The US Tax Code Should Not Allow Billionaires to Exist

The recent ProPublica exposé shows we need to attack the wealth and power of the rich — and that means massively increasing taxes on them.

by Josh Mound via Jacobin on July 20, 2021

Person on beach with a cigar in their mouth and holding money in their hand

The End of Empire and the Rise of Tax Havens

How decolonisation propelled the growth of low-tax jurisdictions, with lasting economic implications for former colonies.

by Vanessa Ogle via New Statesman on December 18, 2020

Taxing the Superrich

For the sake of justice and democracy, we need a progressive wealth tax.

by Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman via Boston Review on February 3, 2020

Trump's Taxes are Fair Game. Just Ask Warren G. Harding.

The Teapot Dome scandal resulted in a 1924 law that gives the House Ways and Means Committee authority to demand returns.

by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on April 20, 2019

The Deeper Problem Behind the Sale of a Posh San Francisco Street

The news that a posh San Francisco street was sold for delinquent taxes exposes the deeper issue with America’s local revenue system.

by Brent Cebul via CityLab on August 18, 2017

The Notion of Tax Reform in Historical Perspective

President Trump's tax plan may be "great", but it will likely not be truly transformative.

by Ajay K. Mehrotra via Process: A Blog for American History on July 13, 2017

How Tax Policy Created the 1%

For nearly a century, American tax policy has privileged the investor class and advanced the accumulation of white wealth.

by Julia Ott via Dissent on April 18, 2017

All the Presidents' Taxes

Get riled up again about Trump's refusal to release his returns with a brief history of this now-discarded presidential tradition.

by Kevin M. Kruse via Esquire on April 14, 2017

Income tax form

Tax Time

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on November 19, 2012

Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens and the Power of the Purse

The Radical Republican oversaw federal spending at the dawn of Reconstruction. How did his support for Black equality affect his leadership in the House?

by Cecily Nelson Zander via HNN on February 25, 2025

Donald Trump at a podium

The New Trumpian Bargain

Trump's second term echoes 19th-century policies: tariffs and immigration limits protect workers, while deregulation risks widening inequality.

by Sohrab Ahmari via New Statesman on November 12, 2024

An illustration of a family tree that is filled with money.

The Getty Family’s Trust Issues

Heirs to an iconic fortune sought out a wealth manager who would assuage their progressive consciences. Now their dispute is exposing dynastic secrets.

by Evan Osnos via The New Yorker on January 16, 2023

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) at a podium.

Dark Money in Politics is a Problem. History Points to a Solution.

Everyone would benefit from new rules forcing greater transparency in political donations.

by Bo Blew via Made By History on September 28, 2022

Democrats Can Counter GOP Warnings About ‘Armies’ of Tax Collectors

An alternative tradition in our politics has long helped convince Americans that tax enforcement is good.

by Joseph J. Thorndike via Made By History on September 7, 2022

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