Historical Tax Facts

-Biblical Israel split into two kingdoms after Solomon’s death in large part because his son, the new king refused to cut taxes.

-According to one historian, plane geometry was not invented by Euclid but by ancient tax collectors who wanted to determine land size for harvest taxes.

-Newspapers have such large-sized sheets of paper because of a British 1816 tax on newspapers.  The “knowledge tax” was levied by page.  In response, newspapers starting using larger paper size to accommodate more text, thereby reducing the number of pages taxed.

-The first income tax in the U.S. was imposed in July 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. In 1862, it was repealed and replaced with the tiered income tax.  The current income tax system was made into law in 1913, when form 1040 was introduced.  It consisted of 3 pages.