ABSTRACT
The enactment of the present system of income taxation followed the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment by less than eight months. True to predictions, the nation’s first permanent income tax proved to be one of low rates, modest graduation, a high exemption, and a minimum of deductions. The Progressive Party also favored ratification of both amendments, while the G.O.P. ignored the two proposals that many historians have judged to be among the most important achievements of the Taft Administration. Letters to the Times also periodically got down to fundamentals. W.B. Mitchell of Chattanooga, Tennessee, on June 7, characterized the proposed levy as “extortion,” The Democrats made tariff reform the primary plank in their 1912 platform, declaring “it to be the fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal government, under the Constitution, has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties, except for the purpose of revenue.”.
