The Rise Of Wilsons Tax Reform

In the first two decades of the twentieth century the national political scene reflected a growing American belief in the ideas of the Progressive movement. This movement was concerned with fundamental social and economic reforms and gained in popularity under two presidents. Yet Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson espoused two different approaches to progressive reform. And each one was able to prevail upon congress to pass legislation in keeping with his own version of the progressive dream. These two people, although they had different principles in mind, had one goal: to make changes to the nation for the better of the people and the country. Setting out to reach this goal, Roosevelt came to be a president of the common man while

These taxes were passed from business to business and eventually to the consumer, ending with higher prices. Along with raised taxes for the working class, this effect happened because there was little encouragement to work if more was going to be taxed. Many people were also not willing to put money into savings accounts or stocks because the interest was highly taxed or had a higher interest rate.

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.

Progress is not something that comes very quickly. It is a gradual process that takes time, in the interest of our country and the Progressive Era, more than a decade. The presidents of this time, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, were like chefs developing a recipe for the betterment of the United States. Every act that was passed, each decision that was made, was a trial or taste-test of the constantly changing recipe for the country. If something angered citizens or drew criticism, the president went back to his office, his kitchen, and was ready to make more changes. Where he left off in the progressive recipe, the next chef took over. He would analyze what had been done, identified his plan of action, and then set to work by either making

The progress income tax has always been a number goal for socialism. During the Eighteenth Amendment, they forbid manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor which went into effect in 1920. It was very important for the working class on the 18th amendment. The working class men still on the home front were too busy working overtime to contribute to the war effort to have either the time or energy to show their disapproval to the amendment. Congress labor contended the 18th Amendment would violate on individual liberty. For the Nineteenth Amendment, they fasten the states from using sex as qualification for suffrage. It was also for women’s suffrage, is to expanded liberty for female

1862 - President Lincoln signed into law a revenue-raising measure to help pay for Civil War expenses. The measure created a Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the nation 's first income tax (Internal Revenue Service, 2013).

3. The first income tax on individuals (after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution) levied tax rates from a low of 2% to a high of 6%.

When Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913, he stated in his address that, “We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon” (First Inaugural Address, online). He did just that when he passed the Clayton Antitrust Act in October 1914. The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890, but it was very vague in the way it described monopolies (Clayton Antitrust Act, online). Big business took advantage of the loopholes, which diminished competition (Clayton Antitrust Act, online). Although Roosevelt and Taft successfully busted about 150 trusts, big businesses continued to grow and our entire economic system remained in the hands of a few men (Taft Biography, online; T. Roosevelt – Section 8, online; Clayton Antitrust, online). Wilson requested Congress to modify the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the Clayton Antitrust Act was born (Clayton Antitrust, online). It is “An Act To supplement existing laws against unlawful restraints and monopolies, and for other purposes” (HR 15657, online). The Sherman Act simply declared monopolies illegal, while the Clayton Act declared activities linked with monopolies to be illegal (Clayton Antitrust Act, online). Such activities include mergers and acquisitions that are intended “substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly” (HR 15657, online). The Federal Trade Commission Act, passed about a month before the Clayton Act, banned

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.

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

In 1861, Lincoln levied the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Needing cash with which to fund the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.00. The wording of the Revenue Act was broadly written to define income as a monetary gain derived from any kind of property, or from any specialized trade, employment, or vocation carried on in the United States or elsewhere or from any source whatever. (A&E Television Networks, 2014)

To reduce what was perceived as abuses by higher income taxpayers NOT paying their "fair" share of taxes

In this period of time, the only voices that could be heard were those who could afford to be heard. Politicians were chosen by inner circle party leaders, which makes the selection process look like a political game of king of the hill; however, with the rise of direct democracy and the expansion of federal power, progressives were able to get their foot in the door and voices heard, with some of the voices coming from the unsanitary and unsafe depths of factories. Imagine being anywhere between ten and fifteen years old, being sent by your parents to work after a day at grade school (953); this is what children understood as normal, even though the work conditions were dangerous and tedious. Since then, the National Child Labor Committee have established laws that prohibit the employment of children (953). Children were not the only ones to have their work schedules adjusted though; women also saw a regulation in work, due to pregnancies and leaving their children at home unsupervised. What progressives continued to supervise was income tax. There was an economic inequality in tax rates, so an idea came about stating that a two percent tax on incomes of more than $4,000 should be established to evenly distribute wealth. William Howard Taft, following Theodore Roosevelt’s public support, got the idea passed by Congress which was later ratified

In place for over one-hundred years now, the estate tax was put into place to do more than just finance World War I. In 1916, there were extremely wealthy families, such as the Vanderbilt’s and the Carnegie’s, that dominated industries and held a large portion of the nation’s wealth. The estate tax was proposed to curb massive amounts of inter-generational wealth that was

The federal government also contributed to the discrepancy between the wealthy and middle-classes. Calvin Coolidge’s administration favored businesses, and as a result, favored the wealthy who invested in these businesses. The Revenue Act of 1926 which was signed by Coolidge on Februrary 26, 1926 reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically. Andrew Mellon, Coolidge’s Secretary of Treasury, was the main force behind these tax cuts and eventually was able to lower federal taxes such that a man with a million-dollar annual income has his federal taxes reduced from $600,000 to $200,000.