Car Finance New Smyrna Used

Posted on November 08, 2011 by Admin
Car Finance New Smyrna Used

Car Finance New Smyrna Used

The Civil War was the costliest conflict in American history, not only in terms of human life but in financial terms as well. To raise money to pay for the war, President Abraham Lincoln’s Treasury secretary, Salmon Chase, persuaded Congress to implement many unprecedented measures. These measures were intended to be for wartime emergency purposes only, but they ultimately became a regular part of the U.S. government’s revenue stream.

The First Income Tax

After President Lincoln called for volunteers to fight the war, Treasury Secretary Chase persuaded Congress to pass the Revenue Act of 1861 to pay them. This established the first national income tax in American history by imposing a three percent tax on all individual annual incomes over $800. Two more tax increases were enacted during the course of the war, but they proved inadequate in meeting the government’s revenue needs.

The personal income tax laws expired when the war ended. When Congress tried reviving them a generation later, the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. That ruling was overridden by the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, which empowered Congress to levy personal income taxes. This revived the progressive tax structure adopted during the Civil War, and this structure is essentially still in place today.