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Article: Income Tax Cases
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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INCOME TAX CASES
INCOME TAX CASES.
Confronted with a sharp conflict of social and political forces, in 1895 the Supreme Court chose to vitiate a hundred years of precedent and void the federal income tax of 1894 (
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company,
157 U.S. 429;
Rehearing,
158 U.S. 601). Not until 1913, after adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, could a federal income tax again be levied.
The 1894 tax of 2 percent on incomes over $4,000 was designed by southern and western congressmen to rectify the federal government's regressive revenue system (the tariff and excise taxes) and commence the taxation of large incomes. Conservative opponents of the tax, alarmed by the rise of ...