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Title: CLAIM: The Founding Fathers Believed in Redistributing Wealth -- Why Do Tea Party Heroes Like Perry and Bachmann Vilify It?
Source:
AlterNet
URL Source: http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152148
Published: Aug 25, 2011
Author: Joshua Holland
Post Date: 2011-08-25 18:15:04 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 2395
Comments: 7
American conservatives have lurched so far to the right they're now trying to re-litigate questions about the role of government that have been settled for hundreds of years.
The redistribution of wealth is a perfect example. Listening to today's Republicans, one would think it is some kind of pernicious and un-American leftist principle – an idea only embraced by foreigners, socialists and assorted freaks.
During the waning days of the 2008 campaign, John McCain jumped on Barack Obama telling “Joe the Plumber” on the campaign trail that we need to “spread the wealth around” a little bit. It became the heart of the case that the decidedly centrist Obama is a “socialist.” A feverish video blaring the headline, "Obama Bombshell Audio Uncovered. He wants to Radically Reinterpret the Constitution to Redistribute Wealth!!" appeared on Youtube soon after. The offering, from a conservative blog called Naked Emperor News, promised: "This video exposes the radical beneath the rhetoric." (As the Washington Post's “Fact-Checker” noted, “On closer inspection, the 'bombshell audio' turns out to be a rather wonkish, somewhat impenetrable, discussion of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren.”)
Last year, after BP's DeepWater Horizon rig blew up, polluting the Gulf of Mexico, Rep Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, slammed the president for pushing the oil giant to establish a fund to pay claims to Gulf residents impacted by the disaster. "The president just called for creating a fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund," said Bachmann. “If I was the head of BP,” she added, “I would let the signal get out there -- 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.'"
The common response to this kind of blather is to point out that conservatives like Bachmann are absolutely in love with policies that redistribute wealth, as long as they shift it from working people upward to the investor class. Whether we're talking about trade policy, labor rules that make it difficult for workers to organize or shifting the tax burden from corporations to the backs of American families, the results of the right's long class war from above are plain to see.
The top 1 percent takes in more than twice the share of national income today than they did 30 years ago. Paul Buchheit, a professor with City Colleges of Chicago, crunched some numbers using IRS data and found that “if middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.” At the same time, top earners pay far less in taxes than they did when Ronald Reagan was in office. That's certainly a valid and factually accurate argument, but it misses a larger point: conservatives are demagoguing what political scientists call a “defining function” of the modern nation-state. Redistributing wealth is every bit as integral to what governments are supposed to do as defending a country's borders or maintaining a functional judicial system. Every government, whether it leans right, left or somewhere in between, redistributes wealth, and they do it constantly. The right portrays wealth redistribution to the denizens of Fox Nation as the government “stealing” the cash of hard-working Americans and then sending checks to the “undeserving” poor. But “transfer payments” are just one form of wealth redistribution, and in this country, they make up a tiny fraction of the whole. Every time a public road is built, a forest fire is extinguished or publicly funded research unearths a new medical innovation, wealth is also redistributed. As long as we don't make people pay their exact share of the cost of laying that road, extinguishing that fire, or researching that therapy, wealth is being redistributed. In rough terms, our military budget costs every tax-payer in the United States about $4,000 per year. But not everyone pays $4,000 or more in federal taxes – every year, the Pentagon budget represents a significant redistribution of our national wealth. But when conservatives say they hate redistributing wealth, they're not talking about cutting military spending.
Like every country, we've been redistributing wealth since the birth of our republic. In his book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America From Washington, Texas governor and newly minted presidential candidate Rick Perry wrote that the 16th Amendment, which gave birth to the federal income tax, was “the great milestone on the road to serfdom” because it represented “the birth of wealth redistribution in the United States.” That's the kind of ahistoric gibberish that's become typical of the far-right these days.
In reality, we've actually been redistributing the wealth since before the founding of the nation. The American colonies imposed “faculty taxes” – which combined the characteristics of income and property taxes – on their citizens. And after the country was founded, we never stopped redistributing the wealth – while federal taxes on income came about with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the government collected taxes, mostly in the form of tariffs, from the very beginning. By 1796, 14 of the 15 states then in existence levied property taxes; Delaware also taxed any income people derived from their property.
These taxes financed federal and state governments – they redistributed wealth from property owners and importers to the population as a whole. So it's a simple, indisputable fact that, like Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, the Founding Fathers so revered by the Tea Partiers and politicians like Bachmann and Perry were very much in favor of wealth redistribution.
Given that it's a defining function of the nation-state as we know it, in a country with a sane discourse, taking place among an informed populace, we'd only be debating whose redistributive policies have what effect on our political economy. But that's a discussion conservatives don't want to have. They don't want to oppose popular programs like Medicare on mere ideological grounds. So, like deficit hysteria or blanket claims that every progressive program is unconstitutional, they're trying to avoid that debate by vilifying the bedrock concept behind modern government – taxing the population based on what people can afford to pay, and providing public goods that are available to all, regardless of their fortunes.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
BS, the federal government wasn't founded to redistribute wealth.
This article is more evidence that the lunatic left is completely divorced from reality.
LMAO!!!!! In further "news" the demonRAT partee has declared that UP is now DOWN! The messiah 'king" obammy was heard to say that HE is the reincarnation of Jesus, FDR, JFK AND Renaldo Magnus! HOW DARE you doubt the wee failed little man child messiah "king" obammy! You, ... YOU, ... raciest! NEWS FLASH! dateline ... DNC/demonRAT partee/failed messiah "king" obammy have declared that SPENDING MORE OF OUR CHILDREN'S MONEY IS NEEDED TO SAVE AMERICA! The DNC whores say that if you have too much credit card debt all you need to do is go get another credit card and pay it off with THAT. What's up wit youse Mericans? Don't youse understand finances? Useful idiots UNITE! "All HAIL the messiah "king" obammy!" Really, WHEN YOU ARE IN TROUBLE BECAUSE YOU HAVE SPENT TOO MUCH, ALL THAT YOU NEED TO DO IS TO SPEND MORE OF OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY! Isn't that EASY? Those d@mned tea partee people, and of course it's ALL de ebil BOOOOSH'S fault! RIGHT whore? Riiiiiiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhtttttttttttttt? libTURD SCUM. SCUM ROTFLMAOAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
Gov. Perry's assertion is ahistoric for a different reason than that stated. It did not give birth to the federal income tax. It gave rebirth. An unapportioned, progressive federal income tax was imposed under President Lincoln on July 1, 1862. Steven R. Weisman in The Great Tax Wars, Simon and Schuster, 2003, p. 42: The income tax of 1861 was repealed by Congress in 1872. It was brought back in 1894 but ruled unconstitutional. Weisman at pp. 232-3 provides an interesting history of the how a tax on "income" morphed into an "excise" tax. * * * The new tax of 1 percent on net income applied to corporations, joint stock companies or associations and insurance companies. Although its aim was to tax income, it was characterized in the law as an excise tax on the privilege of doing business as a corporation. The purpose of that language was to avoid any possibility of the Supreme Court declaring it unconstitutional on the same grounds that it had cited regarding the 1894 income tax. * * * Businesses campaigned for repeal of the tax, filing lawsuits and attacking it in every forum. Republicans, though seizing on the corporate tax as a safe harbor against the income tax, hoped to repeal it eventually or try to get it declared unconstitutional. In March 1911, however, the Supreme Court upheld the law, declaring it not an income tax but an excise tax on the privilege of doing business in a corporate capacity. The court also dismissed objections that the open inspection of tax returns violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures." Historians seem less impressed with the logic of the court than with the simple fact that its makeup had changed since the rejection of the income tax in 1895, along with popular sentiment and the overall balance of power in the United States. The 16th Amendment gave rebirth to the unapportioned income tax on individuals.
Interesting.
The only "wealth redisrributon" mentioned in the Constitution was that copyrights and patents were to only be for LIMITED TIMES after which they would return to the public domain. (Most copyrighted material was and is based on previous public domain matewrial). However Owe-bama and the other leftists would lose their HollyWIERD brainwasher vote if thery restored this CONSTITUTIONAL wealth redistribution of limited copyright terms.
The first Federal income tax was implemented in 1861, about 150 days after Lincoln took office. Lincoln took office March 4, 1861 and the tax law (12 Stat. 292) was passed and signed by August 5, 1861. The Act of 1862 is seen as the grand implementation and created the Internal Revenue Bureau. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1861 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1862 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1864 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h37_2-288 Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. 12 Stat. page 432 contains: Section 68 of the 1862 Revenue Act at 12 Stat. pages 459-60: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1986/winter/civil-war-tax-records.html Prologue Magazine. Winter 1986, Vol. 18, No. 4 Income Tax Records of the Civil War Years By Cynthia G. Fox Ask any adult American the significance of April 15th and the response will almost always be, "income tax." April 15th is a magic date, the last date that can appear on the outside of the envelope we mail to some remote tax center run by the all-powerful Internal Revenue Service. By and large, we American taxpayers are an honest lot. We fill out our 1040 forms, make out the check, are grateful to have tax time over, and pray we don't get audited. What else do we know about the income tax? We were taught in school that the Constitution as originally written did not include permission for the federal government to levy direct taxes on individual citizens. To correct this deficiency the sixteenth amendment was proposed and ratified on February 25, 1913, giving Congress the power to tax incomes "from whatever source derived." Many people believe that this was the first income tax that Americans had to pay. However, the first income tax was actually levied almost fifty-one years earlier by an act of Congress on July 1, 1862 (12 Stat. 432). The records of that first income tax are a valuable source for family and local history. The Civil War income tax was the first tax paid on individual incomes by residents of the United States. It was a "progressive" tax in that it initially levied a tax of 3 percent on annual incomes over $600 but less than $10,000 and a tax of 5 percent on any income over $10,000. In 1864 the rates increased and the ceiling dropped so that incomes between $600 and $5,000 were taxed at 5 percent, with a 10 percent rate on the excess over $5,000. Passed as an emergency measure to finance the Union cause in the Civil War, the first income tax generated approximately $55 million in government revenues during the war. Paying the taxes was viewed as part of the patriotic war effort, and the whole country was proud when the merchant prince A. T. Stewart paid $400,000 in taxes on an income of $4 million. Taxes were levied on residents of all states and territories not in rebellion. In the South, some states operated under reconstruction governments while the war went on. Virginia, for example, the site of the Confederate capital, was largely controlled by federal forces, and northern and western Virginians were subject to the income tax from the beginning. States that seceded were included in the tax base as soon as Union troops established control. Georgians paid income taxes in 1865 even though their state was not officially readmitted to the Union until 1870. The Civil War taxes were not immediately repealed at the end of the war but continued in force until 1872, when the Grant administration sponsored the repeal of most of the "emergency" taxes. The tax on whiskey remained in force. Between 1868 and 1881 the U.S. Supreme Court responded to challenges regarding the validity of the Civil War taxes on dividends, real estate, inheritances, and income tax by upholding the constitutionality of those taxes. Fifteen years later the Populists attempted to revive the income tax and Congress passed a law providing for a new 2 percent tax on incomes over $4,000. But the Supreme Court surprised the nation, reversing its earlier decision and declaring the law unconstitutional in 1895. This ruling, declaring that an income tax is a direct tax and therefore unconstitutional, led to the ratification of the sixteenth amendment in 1913. The Civil War income tax was only a small part of a very complicated system of federal duties, stamp taxes, and fees that the government collected from individuals and businesses. David A. Wells, appointed chairman of the U.S. Revenue Commission in 1865, described the tax structure as being based on a principle "akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, 'whenever you see a head, hit it.'" Congress was guided, Wells wrote, by a similar principle, "whenever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, or a source of income, tax it!" Wells believed that the universal system was based on nothing in past experience and would likely never be repeated. In fact, the 1862 tax law served as the basis for the present internal revenue system, both in articles taxed and in organization for collecting taxes. Congress passed the Internal Revenue Act on July 1, 1862, "to provide Internal Revenue to support the Government and to pay Interest on the Public Debt," but the taxes, including the income tax, were not actually levied until September 1, 1862. Like tax legislation today, the 1862 law was extremely complicated. Monthly specific (or fixed) and ad valorem (a percentage of the market value) duties were placed on articles and products ranging from ale to zinc. Monthly taxes were levied on gross receipts of transportation companies; interest paid on bonds; surplus funds accumulated by financial institutions and insurance companies; gross receipts from auction sales; and sales of slaughtered cattle, hogs, and sheep. Annual licenses were required for bankers, auctioneers, wholesale and retail dealers, pawnbrokers, distillers, brewers, brokers, tobacconists, jugglers ("Every person who performs by sleight of hand shall be regarded as a juggler under this act."), confectioners, horse dealers, livery stable keepers, cattle brokers, tallow-chandlers and soapmakers, coal- oil distillers, peddlers, apothecaries, photographers, lawyers, and physicians. Hotels, inns, and taverns were classified according to the annual rent or estimated rent, from a first-class establishment with a yearly rental of $10,000 to an eighth-class hotel with a yearly rental of less than $100, and charged license fees of from $200 to $5 accordingly. Eating houses paid $10 per year for a license, theaters $100, and circuses $50. Bowling alleys and billiard rooms paid according to the number of alleys or tables belonging to or used in the building to be licensed. Stamp duties were imposed on legal and business documents and on medicines, playing cards, and cosmetics. The new Office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in the Treasury Department supervised the collection of taxes and duties and prepared regulations, instructions, directions, and forms used in assessing and collecting taxes. President Abraham Lincoln issued a series of executive orders dividing all of the states and territories under Union control into collection districts. The number of collection districts in a state or territory could be as few as one, as in the case of the Territory of New Mexico, but it could not exceed the number of its congressional representatives. Subsequent executive orders altered collection districts in some of the states and territories either in number or in geographical coverage. Lincoln also appointed a collector and an assessor for each district. Local officials, or assistant assessors, compiled lists of taxpayers used by collectors to collect the taxes. All persons, partnerships, firms, associations, and corporations submitted to the assistant assessor of their division a list showing the amount of their annual incomes, articles subject to special tax or duty, and the quantity of taxable goods made or sold. The assistant assessors then compiled two alphabetical lists: (1) the names of persons or entities residing in the division who were liable for taxation and (2) the names of persons or entities residing outside the division who owned property in the division. Under each name were recorded the value, assessment (or enumeration of taxable income or items), and the amount of duty or tax due. Reflecting the government's need for money and the difficulty of collecting income taxes, the Internal Revenue Act of June 30, 1864 (13 Stat. 223), raised tax rates and put some teeth into the law. This act made it the duty of any person liable to the annual tax (anyone with an income in excess of $600 or owners of certain luxury items) to file a list of income and taxable property with the assistant assessor in the division in which he or she resided on or before the first Monday in May. Failure to file on time resulted in the assistant assessor estimating a taxpayer's worth plus a penalty of an additional 25 percent of the tax due. A false or fraudulent list or statement resulted in having the assessor or assistant assessor estimate the true value and set the tax due accordingly. In addition, the fine was 100 percent of the tax. From this assessment, the tax form specifically stated, "there can be no appeal." The assessment lists were turned over to the collector of internal revenue, who then posted a notice in each county within the district. In the notice he specified a time and place when he would be collecting the taxes due. Similar to the familiar 1040 tax form, taxpayers submitted their lists of income and property on a Form 24, entitled "Detailed Statement of Income, Gains, and Profits." The Civil War tax form included spaces for reporting income and listing deductions. "Proper deductions" from income derived from business or trade included rent, insurance, freight and expressage, wages of employees, and other expenses. Rental income from lands and buildings was reported separately. The only proper deduction from income derived from the rent of lands was repairs to fences, while rent from buildings could be reduced by the cost of repairs and insurance. Farm income from the sale of livestock and produce was taxed after deductions for labor, repairs, the farmer's livestock costs, insurance, and interest on encumberances. Profits from the sale of property; interest collected on debts, dividends on any stock, capital, and bank deposits; and interest on U.S. bonds or any other source were taxable. Minors with incomes exceeding $600 were also liable through their guardians. In case something had been missed, the form included spaces to enter all other income. There were four supplementary deductions authorized: losses on real estate; interest paid; national, state, and local taxes; and rent paid for a homestead. In addition, all salaries of officers or payments to persons in service in any branch of the U. S. government were free of tax. The 1862 tax law had not exempted federal salaries, and the Treasury Department had deducted the amount of the tax from the paychecks of federal employees. On February 16, 1863, Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase complaining that deductions from the salaries of federal judges constituted a violation of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. The secretary of the treasury forwarded the letter to the attorney general. As a result, all federal salaries were exempt from taxation in the 1864 revision. In 1872 the administrator of the estate of Abraham Lincoln applied for a refund of taxes improperly assessed on Lincoln's salary as president of the United States. Schedule A of Form 24 listed certain categories of personal property that were subject to an annual tax. Carriages of any size and shape not used exclusively in farming or in transporting merchandise were taxed from $1 to $6 depending on their value. Also based on value, gold watches were taxed either $1 or $2 and pianofortes or other parlor musical instruments were taxed at either $2 or $4. Billiard tables not licensed carried an annual tax of $10. Gold and silver plate were taxed by the Troy ounce at 50 cents and 5 cents respectively. Yachts and pleasure and racing boats were taxed based on tonnage, between $5 for 10 tons or less and $100 for more than 110 tons. An act of December 24, 1872, abolished the offices of assessors and assistant assessors. On May 20, 1873, these offices were closed and the records relating to the Civil War taxes were shipped to the commissioner of internal revenue in Washington, D.C. Following the 1895 Supreme Court decision that declared income taxes unconstitutional, Congress approved a joint resolution requiring that income tax returns be destroyed. The secretary of the treasury appointed a committee to carry out the congressional instructions. The commissioner of internal revenue delivered all of the individual tax returns and collectors' lists of income tax paid to the committee on May 5, 1896. The records were then burned. Because the assessors' lists contained information on business licenses and other taxes, they were retained. Some of these original assessment lists survived and are now part of the holdings of the National Archives. As part of an ongoing publications program, the assessment lists for the Civil War period are being converted to microfilm publications. The records from 34 states and territories are currently available on microfilm. Most of the publications reproduce the records for the period 1862 to 1866. However, for some of the territories there were so few records that all of the assessment lists have been included. The records for the Territory of Montana, for example, cover the period 1864-1872, and the records for the Territory of New Mexico date from 1862 to 1874, with a gap in the records in 1872. The lists are not complete for all collection districts, and there may be significant gaps like the one in the New Mexico records. The lists are bound into volumes, and they have been microfilmed in that order. The lists are generally arranged by collection district, thereunder by divisions within the districts, and thereunder chronologically whenever possible. In order to make the lists easier to use, descriptive pamphlets have been prepared that list counties included in each collection district. The assessment lists are divided into three categories: annual, monthly, and special. Entries in the annual and monthly lists are for taxes assessed and collected in those specific periods. The special lists augment incomplete annual and monthly lists and include special taxes, such as a special income tax levied in October 1864. In the descriptive pamphlets the three types of lists are identified by the symbols A (annual), M (monthly), and S (special). These records can prove very useful to local historians, family historians, and researchers interested in specific industries within a geographic area. The lists usually provide the names of the persons or business firms liable for taxes, their addresses (city lists often include street addresses), the taxable period, pertinent remarks on the assessment, the article or occupation taxed, and a notation of payment. Besides detailing revenue raised by the general income tax, these various lists show levies against many diverse items such as inheritances and gold watches as well as larger tax liabilities against capital stock, circulating bank notes, and businesses subject to excise duties. Using the tax lists to determine the degree of an individual's wealth is relatively easy since the Statistics Bureau of the Treasury Department published tables showing the average cost of provisions, consumer goods, board, and rent by state in 1869. These publications also provide information on average wages generally paid by profession or skill. Take, for example, Baltimore banker Thomas Splicer, Jr., of 82 McCulloh Street in the first division of the third Maryland collection district. Splicer had a taxable income of $7,750 in 1865. He owned two gold watches, one of which was valued at more than $100, and a pianoforte valued at between $100 and $200. Splicer had also paid income tax on an inheritance of $2,700 during 1865. Splicer must have been wealthy. According to the Treasury Department tables the average rent on a six-room house in Maryland was $10 per month. Consumer goods and food were also very reasonable in Maryland. Extra fine flour sold for $8 per barrel, roasted coffee was 35 cents per pound, beef was 15 cents per pound, butter was 40 cents per pound, eggs were 22 cents per dozen, coal was $8.50 per ton, medium quality satinets were 50 cents per yard, and men's heavy boots could be had for $5.25 a pair. In 1865 gold sold for $145 per ounce. Some information in the assessment lists is not duplicated elsewhere. For example, persons who had no fixed address may not be included in census records. Some of these individuals— traveling retail dealers and peddlers, for example— were required to obtain licenses under the Civil War tax laws. The assessment list that shows Abraham Lincoln's taxes for 1864, for example, includes the names of several retail dealers whose addresses are "long boats." These river and canal merchants may not have been enumerated in the census. Similarly, itinerant peddlers are listed on monthly and special lists showing payment for retail licenses. [...] Cynthia G. Fox is the Chief of the Military and Civil Records Unit of the National Archives and Records Administration. She received her Master of Arts in American History degree from East Carolina University. [Footnotes omitted] Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government. Revenue Act of 1861 (12 Stat 292-313) Unapportioned Income Tax at 309 - - - Revenue Act of 1862 (12 Stat 432-489) Unapportioned Income Tax at 473 - - - Revenue Act of 1864 (13 Stat 223-306) Unapportioned Income Tax at 281 - - -
#2. To: Brian S (#0)
(Edited)
The Founding Fathers Believed in Redistributing Wealth
In a global economy, borrowing money to stimulate demand is a foolish proposition -- jwpegler
#3. To: Brian S and the rest of you gibbering libTURD whores, ALL sane people (#0)
The Founding Fathers Believed in Redistributing Wealth --
#4. To: Brian S (#0)
In his book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America From Washington, Texas governor and newly minted presidential candidate Rick Perry wrote that the 16th Amendment, which gave birth to the federal income tax, was “the great milestone on the road to serfdom” because it represented “the birth of wealth redistribution in the United States.” That's the kind of ahistoric gibberish that's become typical of the far-right these days.
The law established the Internal Revenue Bureau to collect the tax, set forth the principle of employers withholding the tax, and moved gingerly into the area of defining deductions so that taxpayers paid only what would be defined as their net income. National, state and local taxes could be deducted, for example. Later Congress would allow deductions on such expenses as business costs, interest and losses.
The 1894 income tax, which had a provision for taxing corporations, was declared unconstitutional before it could get implemented.
#5. To: nolu chan (#4)
#6. To: Brian S (#0)
The FARO RESERVE BANK!!! 
#7. To: A K A Stone (#5)
(House Vote #288 (Jun 23, 1862) (108-11, 55 NV) (GOP 73-0)
TO AGREE TO THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF CONFERENCE ON H. R. 312 (12 STAT. 432, APP. 7/1/1862), A BILL TO PROVIDE INTERNAL REVENUE TO SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT AND TO PAY THE INTEREST ON THE PUBLIC DEBT. (P.2891-2,3) That, for the purpose of superintending the collection of internal duties, stamp duties, licenses, or taxes imposed by this act, or which may be hereafter imposed, and of assessing the same, an office is hereby created in the Treasury Department to be called the office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue....
Sec. 68. And be it further enacted, That on and after the first day of August, eighteen hundred and sixth-two, every individual, partnership, firm, association, or corporation, (and any word or words in that act indicating or referring to person or persons shall be taken to mean and include partnerships, firms, associations, or corporations, when not otherwise designated or manifestly incompatible with the intent thereof,) shall comply with the following requirements....
National Archives
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