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Capitation taxes, also known as poll taxes, were initially created in the 1890s. Poll taxes are a fixed tax on individuals, regardless of income; voters must pay the tax before they are permitted to cast a ballot. These taxes were occasionally paired with literacy tests to prove qualification to vote. [3]
Tax rates were 3% on income exceeding $600 and less than $10,000, and 5% on income exceeding $10,000. [8] This tax was repealed and replaced by another income tax in the Revenue Act of 1862. [9] After the war when the need for federal revenues decreased, Congress (in the Revenue Act of 1870) let the tax law expire in 1873. [10]
A poll tax, also called a per capita tax, or capitation tax, is a tax that levies a set amount per individual. It is an example of the concept of fixed tax. One of the earliest taxes mentioned in the Bible of a half-shekel per annum from each adult Jew (Ex. 30:11–16) was a form of the poll tax. Poll taxes are administratively cheap because ...
Federal taxes were expanded greatly during World War I. In 1921, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon engineered a series of significant income tax cuts under three presidents. Mellon argued that tax cuts would spur growth. [155] Taxes were raised again in the latter part of the Great Depression, and during World War II.
A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue.
The new tax proposed by Congress in the Revenue Act of 1862 was the first progressive income tax placed on United States residents. This tax reflected the taxpayers' "ability to pay" by separating citizens into multiple categories and taxing accordingly: [10] For U.S. residents whose annual incomes were less than $600, no tax was collected.
Taxes became less progressive (i.e., they reduced income inequality relatively less) measured from 1979 to 2011. The tax policies of the mid-1980s were the least progressive period since 1979. Government transfer payments contributed more to reducing inequality than taxes. [113]
The Revenue Act of 1861, formally cited as Act of August 5, 1861, Chap. XLV, 12 Stat. 292, included the first U.S. Federal income tax statute (see Sec. 49).The Act, motivated by the need to fund the Civil War, [1] imposed an income tax to be "levied, collected, and paid, upon the annual income of every person residing in the United States, whether such income is derived from any kind of ...