A Brief History Of Income Taxes

NPR | By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Published April 18, 2019 at 2:15 PM CDT

When Benjamin Franklin said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, he wasn't talking about income taxes. America didn't really even have an income tax until 1913. Up until then, the U.S. relied on tariffs to raise revenue.

On today's Indicator, we explore the history of the income tax in the U.S. to find out how and why the government came up with the idea of taxing people's pay.

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Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

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Cardiff Garcia

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

See stories by Cardiff Garcia