Jack of Harts

Another half century went by before we passed the Sixteenth Amendment, which gave the Federal government the power to collect direct taxes on any income from the American people. The Federal government mainly received its income via tariffs and various luxury or sin taxes before this. It had instituted a brief Income Tax as a wartime measure during the Civil War, but that expired in the 1870s, and the Supreme Court would later rule against direct taxes. A coalition of Democrats and Progressive Republicans cooperated to make the permanent Income Tax as we now know it a reality in 1913.