The History of the U.S. Tax System Essay

When the Founding Fathers resisted these taxes on principle that Parliament did not have the authority to tax the colonists, Britain attacked and minimized colonial self-rule , declared colonists subject to any act of Parliament , reestablished internal taxes , closed colonial ports, dissolved

The current tax policy in the United States is very confusing and it is very costly for our government to administer it. It is in the best interest of our country and its citizens to revise or replace our current tax policy.

The taxes were a huge part of the Revolutionary war and they caused one of the key rebellions in the British Colonies that sparked major conflict. This rebellion is known as the Boston Tea Party. In the Boston Tea Party, a group of Patriots who called themselves the Sons of Liberty dressed themselves as Native Americans and went to the Boston Harbor. Once there they went aboard ships that were carrying tea and they threw 92,000 pounds(340 chests) of tean into the harbor. This act changed the world as the colonists knew it. It sparked the Coercive acts, known as the intolerable acts in America to be

Throughout the entire existence of any form of government, there has always been taxes. Most of the time (if not all), people hate taxes. With this being said, the United States has adopted a progressive tax since its very existence. We believe that if our nation is placed under a flat tax system, our economy will operate more effectively. If we incorporate a flat tax system we will be able to ensure fairness among all citizens, eliminate tax loopholes, and allow opportunities for business expansion. With this being said, we will be examining the strengths and weaknesses about the flat tax system and how it has been used into practice.

George Washington, The first U.S. president, created a cabinet in 1789. A cabinet is a different use of government. New York the brand new government acted fast to make the nation's financial structure increase. The government assumed that the revolutionary war debt the states and the government. The debts paid for a program through new taxes and tariffs. The tax on whiskey was a revolt that the tariffs and taxes led it to, the president got a army and suppressed the tax on whiskey revolt. After that the government adopted the Bill of rights as the ten amendments for the constitution. The federal judiciary was established by the judiciary act of 1789. The Judiciary act of 1789 also establish the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court began to be

When Great Britain controlled the colonies, the Colonists could not live the life they wanted to. They had low paying jobs, were not treated well by the king and his soldiers, and on top of that Britain posted extra taxes on goods. The colonists were already poor from low pay jobs, so taxes just added

"They say power to tax is a necessary part of every supreme legislative authority and that if they have not that power over America they have none and the America is at once a kingdom of itself" [Raising Money and Rising Anger. 22]. later many started complaining that the king had no right to tax them this much. Other than the Americans don't like their duty of being taxed the British were also being taxed as well. Colonist got used to their taxation within their own government.

During this period of time from 1783 to 1800 there was a lot of financial instability among the colonies because of the debt that had been garnered from the Revolutionary War. There were also riots, i.e., the Whiskey and Shays Rebellions, which resulted from Americans who were upset about government taxation. The government was also undergoing huge amounts of change such as the change from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution as well as the development of separate political parties. Though American’s fight for independence had long since passed by the time they began to develop the system by which they would govern themselves as a sovereign country, many of the things they experienced under British rule, such as military use and

In 1763 the British were among the most heavily taxed people in the world, where as the colonies in the Americas were prospering, Greenville, the British finance minister asked, “Why shouldn’t these colonists begin to pay some of the costs of their own government and defense?” The British then passed the sugar and quartering acts as well as the stamp act which all basically were designed to bring in more income from the colonies.

As shown in document 1, Congress held no power to tax, this quickly became a big problem for the government as they were broke. Being without money meant that even if they tried to propose a tax, there were no repercussions for not paying. In 1786, a group of farmers in Massachusetts decided that they were going to revolt against the government and attempted to shut down the courts. This was called Shay’s Rebellion as it was led by Daniel Shay. Shay was a war veteran riddled with debts and the group's goal was to stop the imprisonment of citizens with debt. Document three is a depicts a rebel fighting an official and a letter from George Washington to James Madison saying, “Will not the wise and good people work hard to prevent this evil?” Technically, there could be taxes but no one would listen, they did not have to if the government could not do anything about it. Farmers were angry with high taxes and refused to pay. The Articles of Confederation dug America into a whole because after the war; the nation needed astronomical amounts of money to pay back other countries who had helped out with artillery and supplies but the government set taxes too high and people simply refused to pay. Document 2 correctly summarizes the problems faced by the Americans. It is a ship labeled Articles of Confederation in

After the French and Indian War, the government was millions of pounds in debt and Parliament needed a way to pay back the debt without taxing the already heavily taxed British citizens. So, naturally they turned to the colonies, who were already unhappy with their mother country, and imposed many unwarranted taxes on the colonists. According to Mary Beth Norton, Carol Sheriff, et al. A People & A Nation 9th ed. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2012, 2008 print, Parliament passed the first tax in the colonies, the Sugar and Currency Acts, in 1764; these two acts were used to discourage colonists from smuggling molasses from a French company and to outlaw the inflated colonial money that the Americans were paying their debts with, respectively. These two acts were placed on an economy that was already in the midst of a depression, therefore angering the colonists even more than before. Despite the colonists attempts to repeal the Sugar Act, George Grenville, the acting prime minister, kept the act and continued on with even more hazardous

On June 21st of 1788 the United States of America was an optimistic place to live. The newly formed country had officially ratified their Constitution on this date, and within a year George Washington would become its first President. These events signified an unofficial end to the American Revolution, which had its start in part, because Americans had rejected the notion of taxation without representation. This modern form of government, however, did, have some problems it needed to deal with. Unable to levy taxes in previous years the federal government had found itself deep in debt. This federal debt also included all the states debt as well (Chernow, 2004, 297). The government desperately needed to find a source of revenue to pay off

Taxes, such as the Stamp Act, increased prices of everyday goods, such as cards, newspapers, and Dice.(Doc 3) The reason why the taxes were coming so often was because the French and Indian War just happened. ”King George is a Tyrant. He breaks the laws. He is an enemy to his own people.” (Doc 1) These words were famous words from Patrick Henry on how he thought of the taxes were unfair. During this time, the Americans didn’t have representation for taxes. During this time, The British Empire was basically saying to the colonists “Since the French and Indian War was on the soil of Americans, all colonists must pay for the damage.” “I know not of what others may choose but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death,” was another quote from Patrick Henry.(OI) So, even though the colonists were already mad for unjustly taxation, took action into their own hands. Also, the colonists were unhappy because they had no representation. James Otis started up the quote “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” which meant that it wasn’t fair for the British to tax the american colonists without american

By 1785 the number of attendees of congressional sessions were low, they were tired of dealing with issues they knew they were not able to solve. Many of them stayed at home due to the angry comments about wartime loans. Many of their debt came from people who put their money into congress and those were widows, gamblers and the wealthy people with fortunes. People had lost all the money they had b y investing it into the war and congress was unable to pay them back. The government did not have the funds to enforce decisions such as taxing the states and the people in those states to pay back the war debts. No state allowed wanted anyone else taxing their own people besides themselves. At some point the governments currency was

The year is 1787, and the American Revolution is over, insofar as the war with the British was concerned. However, America’s political revolution, and the question of what America should become was yet to be answered. At the time the States were operating under The Articles of Confederation which gave supreme power to the individual States, as opposed to a strong central Federal government. The Articles had served their needed purpose in the lead up to and the duration of the Revolutionary War against the British, but were woefully inadequate as a guiding document for the new United States. The Articles of Confederation had no provisions for the Federal government to collect taxes or regulate state commerce. The Federal government