Republicans created the IRS.
With regard to a Federal Income Tax
A growing number of
Republicans also began supporting the idea, notably Theodore Roosevelt and the "Insurgent" Republicans (who would go on to form the Progressive Party). These Republicans were driven mainly by a fear of the increasingly large and sophisticated military forces of Japan, Britain and the European powers, their own imperial ambitions and the perceived need to defend American merchant ships. Moreover, these progressive Republicans were, as the name suggests, convinced that central governments could play a positive role in national economies.
Opposition to the Sixteenth Amendment was led by establishment Republicans because of their close ties to wealthy industrialists, although not even they were uniformly opposed to the general idea of a permanent income tax. In 1910, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, shortly before becoming a Supreme Court Justice, spoke out against the income tax amendment. While he supported the idea of a federal income tax, Hughes believed the words "from whatever source derived" in the proposed amendment implied that the federal government would have the power to tax state and municipal bonds. He believed this would excessively centralize governmental power and "would make it impossible for the state to keep any property".
The Democrats won both houses and the Presidency in 1912 and the country was generally in a left-leaning mood, with the Socialist Party winning a seat in the House in 1910 and polling six percent of the popular presidential vote in 1912. Three advocates for a federal income tax ran in the presidential election of 1912. On February 25, 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox proclaimed that the amendment had been ratified by three-fourths of the states and so had become part of the Constitution. The Revenue Act of 1913 was enacted shortly thereafter.
Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
