The telephone excise tax that was introduced during the Spanish-America War was repealed after the war was over. The current telephone excise tax dates from the Korean War, I believe. Opponents of this tax like to refer to it incorrectly as the Spanish-American War tax to hold it up for ridicule. It’s like referring to our income tax as the Civil War tax because the first income tax was levied during the Civil War.
I assume that the Bernard Sussman to whom Cecil replied in the linked column is the same one who wrote the casebook that I linked to. I had never noticed the connection before manhattan’s post.
The income tax was actually passed because we needed a permanent replacement for the whiskey tax which was soon to disappear forever.
Everyone knew prohibition on a national level was coming, so we needed a new way to finance the federal government on a continuing basis.
However, when prohibition was repealed, they “forgot” to repleal the income tax (which wasnt needed anymore).
Since very very few americans ever paid any income tax, very few americans one seemed to care that the income tax was not repealed. For the most part, only the rich paid income tax until the 1950’s, it just was not an issue with most voters.
Kennedy’s tax cut of dropping the income tax rate from 90% only affected the wealthy(his friends). I really didnt know anybody personally who cared about it his tax cut.
Not quite. From the U.S. Treasury’s History of the U.S. Tax System
Yes, it’s the same guy. Bernard’s one of the experts in de-bunking these bizarre financial/tax theories that come up, as his collection of cases indicates.
I don’t think hyjyljyj’s really interested in the truth, Bricker - the last time he posted the same nonsense half a year ago in this thread, he showed no interest in replying to the detailed responses he got from manhattan, Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor, or me.
Guess he’s just a true believer and doesn’t want to be 
with facts.