Income Tax

The 16th Amendment, authorizing Congress to impose a federal income tax, was ratified 102 years ago today.

A half-century earlier, Abraham Lincoln had won approval for a temporary federal income tax to help pay for, and win, the Civil War for the North.

The next attempt came in 1894, when Congress imposed a 2 percent tax on incomes exceeding $4,000. It affected 2 percent of Americans.

But the Supreme Court declared that personal income tax illegal in 1895. The 16th Amendment in 1913 overturned the justices’ decision.

The first taxes were collected the next year, in 1914, from 360,000 people — about one-half of 1 percent of the population.

One of the earliest taxpayers, Mark Twain, said in 1864 that he had paid an income tax of $36.82, plus a $3.12 fine for filing late.

This was all right, he said, because it made him feel important that the government was paying attention to him.