Income Tax Day, Paying for War

This month, most of us will pay our income taxes. Few look forward to this experience, and some will howl with rage. Indeed, the person purported to have first introduced an income tax, the Chinese Emperor Wang Mang, was summarily overthrown in A.D. 23 and ended with his severed head prominently displayed atop the walls of Wancheng. Late 18th-century British efforts to impose an income tax generated half the revenue envisioned because the initiative was so unpopular and so generally evaded. In our own country, an income tax was expressly unconstitutional as the Constitution was originally written. Given such broad unpopularity, why are we still going to forward or acknowledge such fat …