anecdotes from tax history: the modern income tax

Anthony is of course being sarcastic when he calls the days before the modern income tax"the good old days".

Certainly the modern income tax is a vile phenomenon. It was first introduced in England in 1798 as a temporary measure - across the channel, a frenchman called Napoleon was up to no good, and money was desperately required to fight him. Not willing to rely on the traditional wartime sources of revenue (looting and pillaging), the government was looking for new ways to tax its citizens. The prime minister of the time, William Pitt, openly admitted that income tax in its proposed form was "repugnant to the customs and manners of the nation", but introduced it anyway. He did promise though, that this new tax was strictly temporary and would be repealed as soon as possible.

Broadly speaking, income tax carried on upsetting people and raising revenue until 1816, when Parliament finally got their chance to be rid of it. They farewelled income tax with with some vehemence, not just repealing the legislation, but ordering that all income tax records be cut into small pieces, taken to a factory and turned into pulp so that income tax could never be reintroduced again.

Yeah well, whatever. Like good bureaucrats everywhere, the men of the tax office had made duplicate copies of everything and quietly filed them away. In 1842, when once again a politician re-introduced income tax, the new legislation was remarkably identical to that previously destroyed.