Those Dirty Rotten taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America [Paperback]

Charles Adams (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0684871149 | ISBN-13: 978-0684871141 | Publication Date: May 1, 1999 | Edition: Original

In 1798, after Congress had passed its first direct tax on houses, the government cooked up a scheme to count and measure the windows on every taxpayer's house, in order to calculate how much to charge. But German settlers in eastern Pennsylvania would have none of it. They organized into small bands, armed themselves, and scoured the countryside for assessors who were seized, assaulted, and driven across county lines. When some of the rebels were arrested, an auctioneer named John Fries marched on the courthouse and freed them. President John Adams called out the militia. Fries was arrested, tried for treason, and sentenced to be hanged.

It was hardly the first tax revolt in American history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Whiskey Rebellion to the Fries Rebellion, the late eighteenth century in America was full of armed violence in response to hated taxes. Yet, as Charles Adams recounts in this remarkable book, the Fries Rebellion was also far from the last of its kind.

Throughout its history America has been home to a series of little-known tax rebellions. These rebellions have played major roles in the presidencies of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and many of their successors. They have helped bring about the Civil war, the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, and, ironically, the birth of the Internal Revenue Service. When the old Internal Revenue Bureau was strengthened to control moonshiner tax rebels in the Appalachias, it started a "Second Whiskey Rebellion" that continues even today. Country singer George Jones' popular ballad recalls:

G-Men, T-Men, Revenuers too, looking for the place where my pappy made his brew.

Today, as long-overdue calls for abolishing or overhauling the IRS are finally being heard in the halls of Congress, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes teaches us that we are continuing a long and vitally important American tradition. We have overthrown the tyranny of British taxes, Federalists' taxes, the Tariff, and the Revenuers' system. Has the tyranny of the Income Tax finally had its day?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Adams, an independent scholar affiliated with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., has produced a breezy account of tax revolt in American history, from the Stamp Act to the present day. Although there is scarce opportunity in the book's 242 pages to delve into the details of such pivotal events in early American history as Shay's Rebellion and the collapse of the Federalist Party, Adams does consistently manage to choose those details which best support his thesis that "excessive" taxation is a form of government tyranny. This leads to interesting interpretations of history such as his sympathetic description of the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan as an underground resistance movement against federal tax collectors. Adams also provides a full litany of charges of present-day assaults on liberty by the IRS. There is throughout a certain sense of preaching to the choir, quite understandable given the subject matter. However, those who pick up the book not thoroughly convinced that taxes are at best a necessary evil might welcome more history and less rhetoric. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In his dedication to Chairman Bill Archer of the House Ways and Means Committee, Adams (For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on Civilization, LJ 3/1/93), a Washington tax consultant, boldly declares his hostility to the prevailing U.S. income tax system. Adams divides U.S. history into five periods, running from Colonial times through the Cold War, and in every segment he argues that excessive taxation constitutes the root cause of all the wars, rebellions, and social turmoil that have beset the American people. The author laments the passing of the concepts of limited government in favor of a massive federal bureaucracy, governmental paternalism, supposedly high taxes, and runaway deficit spending. Adams scarcely conceals his sympathy for this country's long line of tax dodgers and resisters, and observes with equal satisfaction that today America's affluent evaders employ far less violent and more effective means to confound the IRS. A highly partisan yet provocative history of the U.S. tax system and its influence on the American people; recommended for public and academic libraries.?John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684871149
• ISBN-13: 978-0684871141
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #954,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Hitting History, April 15, 2008

By 

D. W. MacKenzie (New London CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Those Dirty Rotten taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America (Paperback)

Those Dirty Rotten Taxes is, as the title implies, polemical in nature. Adams has strong views and does not shy from expressing them. Adams claims that excessive taxation was central to American history. There is much truth to this claim. The American War of Independence was driven largely by taxation, but not merely the absolute level. Taxes had been higher in colonial America, the colonists objected to arbitrary taxation without representation, not just the absolute level of taxation. That being said, Adams is still on to something important. Unjust taxation does serve to motivate political action. Tax revolts became less common and more tame with the passage of time precisely because many Americans have come to accept and even embrace our current tax system. That is, many Americans need to be shaken out of their complacency and delusions. The hard hitting prose of Those Dirty Rotten Taxes should be effective in its capacity to motivate the complacent. Delusional leftists are harder to deal with, as they tend to be dogmatic, if not intellectually dishonest. Be that as it may, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes is great as a polemical history of American taxation.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Only Certain Things in Life: Taxes, and more Taxes, May 25, 2006

By 

Bryan Carey "Bryan Carey" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Those Dirty Rotten taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America (Paperback)

Author Charles Adams is a former lecturer at UCLA and a tax consultant with the CATO Institute, a Washington D.C. Think Tank. He has written many publications on the subject of taxes, with most all of them attacking the present system of income tax and discussing ways to improve the system of internal revenue collection.

This book is mostly a lesson in history and it explains in detail how certain taxes came into being and how the American people reacted. Much of the coverage here is old news, like the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the protests that led to the American Revolution. But then there are other taxes that are not so well- known, like the tariffs that led to the Civil War in the 1800's. Most people think the Civil War was fought over slavery, but this was only one reason among many. Adams shows how Lincoln deliberately used taxes to antagonize the South, leading ultimately to war, which was exactly what he wanted.

The income tax is the one that most Americans know best, because it's the tax that everyone pays at present. Woodrow Wilson was president when the income tax became law. Officials who passed the tax swore that it would never be greater than a few percentage points and it would never be levied against anyone except the very wealthy. Of course, as everyone knows, this was a blatant lie to sell the plan to the states and to the general public. Once the ability to tax was in place, it was only a matter of a few years before it expanded and grew to several times the original level. Adams talks at length about the deceptions used by politicians to get this and other taxes enacted.

Adams spends most of the book talking about the income tax and possible alternatives to the tax. One part of the book is titled "The tyranny of the income tax, 1913 to 199?". This book was published in 1998. Adams was being very optimistic if he thought the income tax would be a thing of the past only 1 year after he published his book. The use of the question mark shows his optimism that the income tax will be replaced with a different system of taxation at some point in the near future.

This book is a fairly quick read. The print is larger than normal and many of the pages include illustrations, with political cartoons and photos from the past, mocking the government's position on taxation. The cartoons are mostly humorous in nature, and they depict different political figures and other people talking cynically about different taxes and their affects on the people.

Overall, this is a good book about the issue of taxation and rebellion. It's obviously biased against taxes, but author Charles Adams maintains a level of respect throughout, stating some of the facts about taxes and offering up alternatives to the present system. He doesn't resort to name- calling, like some other authors. You can tell that Adams is no friend of taxation, but he basically lets you, the reader, decide for yourself about this difficult issue and how it has affected Americans from the early days of the republic.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining vignettes of citizens resisting the taxman, August 14, 2004

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: THOSE DIRTY ROTTEN TAXES: The Tax Revolts that Built America (Hardcover)

This book is for general reading and should not be confused with a scholarly history of taxation. It is a series of chapters that are brief retellings of various historical incidents involving citizens resisting taxation in various ways or citizens being made to suffer through taxation programs. These tellings do have a point of view and historians may find some of them rather blunt and ignoring certain subtleties that might mitigate some of the author's point of view. However, in total the book does make its point that it is up to the citizens to hold the government responsible for its spending and the taxation it levies to pay for that spending.

While I abhor taxation beyond what is absolutely necessary, I think all the arguments about taxes actually function to distract us from the real thing we should be debating and that is government spending. The problem is that the modern state has so many of us on the receiving end of this or that program that we will resist any program that decreases the increase in our program's spending (let alone any actual cuts). So, when someone proposes ANY cut in spending, those being cut raise a loud resistance effort to defeat it. This is why we try and starve the government by cutting taxes - the hope being that the starved beast will not be able to increase the handouts without limit.

Anyway, this can be an entertaining read. There is a list for further reading and an index. Just don't take everything in here as gospel.