Those who particularly hate paying income tax can blame the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The measure, ratified by 36 states in 1913, brought a graduated income tax once and for all to American citizens. At the time, the highest tax bracket was at 7 percent and incomes taxes were paid only by approximately 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans.

While the 16th Amendment instituted what has become the current income tax system, it was not the first time Americans were required to pay such a tax. That distinction dates back to 1861 and the Civil War, which was costing the federal government more than $1 million a day. The Civil War also saw the creation of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, which was to become the Bureau of Internal Revenue and, finally, the Internal Revenue Service in 1953.

Wartime Revenues

The main reason income taxes were needed was to pay for war expenses. In 1866, revenue collected from internal sources, such as the income tax, reached more than $310 million, a total not equaled again until 1911. Congress sought to impose an income tax without a wartime imperative in 1894, but it was a flat tax levied without consideration of each state's population, which was ruled unconstitutional for that reason in 1895.

As such, the Spanish-American War was financed by the War Revenue Act of 1899 through selling bonds, taxing recreational facilities, and even chewing gum. The act also doubled the taxes on beer and tobacco. Fear amongst Congressmen from agricultural states that the unsound reliance on high tariffs would prompt taxation of property, forced a coalition of western and southern states to prompt passage of the 16th Amendment, which allowed imposing the tax without consideration of the population of each state.

Record Keeping

With the institution of the national income tax also came a lot of paperwork, in particular the creation of Form 1040 as the standard document for reporting income, which survives to this day. Income reporting also meant that the government now collected an enormous amount of personal information about its citizens. In 1916, Congress massed provisions that protected the privacy of the information in tax returns and made it possible for the government to use tax laws to convict criminals who did not report their ill gotten gains.

By the 1950s, the IRS became the largest accounting and records keeping organization in the world and the first to make widespread use of computers to keep track of that information. It was during the 1950s and later that the current structure of the federal income tax system was established, with Congress and each American President, in turn, making modifications to the system.

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