Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 54

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR.) Report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue . . . for the Year Ending June 20, 1863. 19, 241 pages. 8vo, publisher's cloth, moderate wear; lacking front free endpaper, moderate foxing. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864
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First annual report of the forerunner of the Internal Revenue Service. The office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue was created by the Revenue Act of 1862, in an effort to generate funds to support the Civil War. The office was closed in 1872 with the expiration of that provision, but efforts to revive the federal income tax continued until the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913 created the Internal Revenue Service.

This report contains a long introductory essay and a shorter summary by Commissioner Joseph J. Lewis, followed by reports breaking down the revenue collected by district across the country. We can see each state's contributions from apothecaries, architects, auctioneers, and other trades going through the alphabet. Lewis states: "In the United States, the needs of the government have so suddenly increased beyond all proportion to those of its early history, that it has become necessary to create and organize, with unprecedented rapidity, a new system of revenue. . . . The present tax laws, on the whole, have not merely endured, but welcomed by the people in a manner, it is believed, elsewhere unparalleled. . . . In such a war as that in which the country is now engaged, the contest is as much of exchequers as of armies." None traced at auction.

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