IRTH OF PERSONAL INCOME TAX
Seeing the vast amounts of money needed to wage a war, and the super profits it can return on any investment, some shrewd politicians decided that instead of going directly to Bankers the would tax the wages earned by wage earners as a major and continuous source of government income. Although a federal income tax has now become universal no one living today can remember a time in history when these taxes did not exist.. Most Income Laws, as we now know them, came into existence at the turn of the new century: in the United States in 1913, in Canada in 1917, at first a temporary tax and then established on a permanent basis. At the start Income Tax Rates were in the low 3-5% range. Previous to the personal and corporate income
tax era, governmental income was based on a series of export, import income duties and excise taxes. The income tax rates escalated surely and quickly to reach today’s universal standard of a 30 - 50 % range. These higher rates based on today’s much higher wages and profits, along with
implementations of new provincial and state sales and services taxes in the ranges of 5 to 15% have provided most of the governments of the western world with astronomical amounts of money by which to govern the state and the welfare of the general public. War making is now a tax based expenditure. The irony of all this income tax history is that a few years ago most economists generally agreed and predicted that once personal income and sales taxes on societyreached 33% there would be rioting in the streets.
"The course of Russian history has, indeed, been greatly affected by the operations of international bankers… . The Soviet Government has been given United States Treasury funds by the Federal Reserve Board acting through the Chase Bank, England has drawn money from us through the Federal Reserve Banks and has re-lent it at high rates of interest to the Soviet Government."
(Rep. Louis T. McFadden, chairman of the House Banking
and Currency Committee, 1920-1930)
