Ask any adult American the significance of April 15th and the response will almost always be, "income tax." April 15th is a magic date, the last date that can appear on the outside of the envelope we mail to some remote tax center run by the all-powerful Internal Revenue Service. By and large, we American taxpayers are an honest lot. We fill out our 1040 forms, make out the check, are grateful to have tax time over, and pray we don't get audited.
What else do we know about the income tax? We were taught in school that the Constitution as originally written did not include permission for the federal government to levy direct taxes on individual citizens. To correct this deficiency the sixteenth amendment was proposed and ratified on February 25, 1913, giving Congress the power to tax incomes "from whatever source derived." Many people believe that this was the first income tax that Americans had to pay. However, the first income tax was actually levied almost fifty-one years earlier by an act of Congress on July 1, 1862 (12 Stat. 432). The records of that first income tax are a valuable source for family and local history.
