This year — 2013 — marks the 100th anniversary of the modern income tax, a tax that dominates the revenue scheme of the federal government today. Individual income taxes accounted for about 45 percent of all federal tax revenue in 2012, along with 35 percent for Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes (which are also a tax on income), 10 percent for corporate income taxes, and only 10 percent for all other tax sources.
It wasn’t always so. Prior to ratification of the 16th (income tax) Amendment in February 1913, the federal government managed its few constitutional responsibilities without an income tax, except during the Civil War period. During peacetime, it did so largely — or even entirely — on import taxes called “tariffs.” Congress could afford to run the federal government on tariffs alone because federal responsibilities did not include welfare programs, agricultural subsidies, or social insurance programs like Social Security or Medicare. After the Civil War, tariff revenues sometimes suffered under a protectionist policy ushered in by the Republican Party that supplemented federal income via excises on alcohol, tobacco, and inheritances. But before the war, the need for tariff revenue to finance the federal government generally kept the tariff at reasonable levels. During wartime throughout early American history, the Founding Fathers were able to raise additional revenue employing a different method of direct taxation authorized by the U.S. Constitution prior to the 16th Amendment. These alternative taxing methods gave the young American nation embarrassing peacetime budget surpluses that several times came close to paying off the national debt.
In one instance, the U.S. government paid off its entire national debt without the existence of an Internal Revenue Service. President Andrew Jackson boasted in his veto of the Maysville Road Bill in 1830 that God had blessed the nation with no taxes (except tariffs on imports) and no national debt:
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