Internal Revenue Service Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===American Civil War (1861β65)=== [[File:George S. Boutwell, the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service.jpg|thumb|[[George S. Boutwell]] was the first [[Commissioner of Internal Revenue]] under President [[Abraham Lincoln]].]] In July 1862, during the [[American Civil War]], [[President of the United States|President]] [[Abraham Lincoln]] and [[United States Congress|Congress]] passed the [[Revenue Act of 1862]], creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacting a temporary [[income tax]] to pay war expenses. The Revenue Act of 1862 was passed as an emergency and temporary war-time tax. It copied a relatively new British system of income taxation, instead of trade and property taxation. The first income tax was passed in 1862: *The initial rate was 3% on income over $800, which exempted most wage-earners. *In 1862 the rate was 3% on income between $600 and $10,000, and 5% on income over $10,000. By the end of the war, 10% of [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] households had paid some form of income tax, and the Union raised 21% of its war revenue through income taxes.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tax.org/Museum/1861-1865.htm |title=1861β1865: The Civil War |publisher=Tax.org |access-date=August 9, 2010 |archive-date=February 16, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110216062329/http://www.tax.org/Museum/1861-1865.htm }}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page