From colonial levies to odd loopholes, Today’s Time Capsule revisits America’s strangest tax habits

A look back at U.S. tax history shows today’s fights over fairness, growth, and who pays are mostly old arguments in new clothes—and the policy risks of repeating the same habits are rising again.

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America’s Tax “Traditions” Are Weirder Than You Remember

The New York Daily News was out with a piece today walking readers through the history of America’s taxes—and it’s a useful reminder that our national arguments about who pays what, and why, are practically older than the republic itself. The article’s basic point is that a lot of what people “know” about U.S. taxes is either incomplete or flat-out wrong once you look at the long arc: what we’ve taxed, when we’ve taxed it, and how Americans have justified it has shifted constantly, usually in response to war, economic stress, or political necessity.

In the Daily News’ telling, American taxation didn’t begin as an income-tax story at all. Early federal revenue leaned heavily on tariffs and excise taxes—taxes on goods—because they were easier to collect in a young country with limited administrative reach. When the federal government needed more money fast, it tended to reach for whatever could be enforced: duties at ports, “sin taxes,” and other levies that, while politically unpopular, were at least practical. The piece also reminds readers that the income tax we now treat as permanent furniture was historically episodic, arriving in moments of national strain and then becoming more entrenched as the machinery of collection got better and the demands on the federal government grew.

The article also underscores a political truth: Americans have always disliked taxes in the abstract while simultaneously demanding the things taxes pay for—security, infrastructure, benefits, and emergency relief. That tension is not a modern pathology; it’s a permanent feature. The surprising part, if you’ve absorbed today’s partisan talking points, is how many “new” arguments have very old antecedents. The debate over whether taxes should be broad-based or aimed at narrow targets; whether consumption taxes are “regressive” or simply “honest”; whether the wealthy should shoulder more as a matter of fairness or whether that undermines growth—none of this is novel. It’s reruns with different costumes.

What happens next is predictable: as deficits and debt-service costs keep crowding out discretionary spending, Washington will flirt with every revenue tool in the old American toolbox—tariffs, excises, minimum taxes, enforcement surges, and “temporary” provisions that never die. We’ve been here before, especially in periods when the country’s ambitions outgrew its willingness to fund them. The historical lesson that applies today is simple: republics don’t collapse because citizens argue about taxes; they stumble when they stop insisting that taxes be legible, limited, and tied to clearly stated public purposes.

Read the full story at New York Daily News.

✍ My Take: The reason a historical tax tour matters in 2026 is that we’re once again in the classic American bind: an aging society, rising interest costs, loud demands for border security and defense readiness, and a public that wants fewer headaches at filing time. When you put those together, you get the same political temptation we’ve seen before—promise everything, pay for it later, and treat the tax code like a Swiss Army knife for social policy. That’s how you end up with a system that is both resented and easily gamed: high statutory ideals, high compliance friction, and endless carve-outs that turn “fairness” into a lobbying contest. A light conservative view—mine, for what it’s worth—is that the tax system should be boring again: raise the money needed for core functions with the least distortion possible, and stop using the IRS as the nation’s main behavioral therapist. If lawmakers want to subsidize families, apprenticeships, domestic manufacturing, or clean energy, they should be willing to defend those choices in daylight and, ideally, do it on-budget rather than through a labyrinth of credits that only the well-advised can fully exploit. Broad bases and lower rates aren’t a slogan; historically, they’re how you reduce the political oxygen available for favoritism.

Read the full story at New York Daily News →

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Until tomorrow, keep one eye on the headlines and the other on the footnotes.

— The Time Capsule Editor