Some Observations On Direct Taxation In Reference To Commercial Reform

Seligman, Edwin R.A. The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory, and Practice of Income Taxation at Home and Abroad. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged with a New Chapter. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914. xi, 743 pp. Reprinted 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 2003052763. ISBN 1-58477-385-5. Cloth. $140. * Reprint of second edition, which includes a new chapter on the income tax of 1913. Seligman [1861-1939], an eminent economist and authority on tax issues, argued that graduated income taxes distribute the burden of taxation with greater justice than other systems. This was a persuasive idea. "In fact, Professor Seligman's advocacy of the income tax in the various papers which were incorporated in [this book] was an important factor in educating the American public to the point where the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment and of the law of 1913 was possible": Columbia Law Review 15:292 cited in Marke, A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University (1953) 852. After he sets out the fundamental problem of the concept of income taxation, Seligman enhances his theoretical argument with a historical examination of income tax in Europe and the United States. In Part I he looks at the income tax in the middle ages, in England, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. In Part II he covers the history of the income tax in the United States from the New England colonies through the income tax of 1913, and includes discussion of the historical antecedents of the Direct Tax Clause, a description of the historical context of the Civil War income tax and the income tax in the Confederacy, and a consideration of the constitutionality of the income tax. With a useful index and a thorough bibliography.