War and Taxes
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An enlightening work for the tax geek and the history buff,
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This review is from: War and Taxes (Paperback)
While acknowledging the Bush tax cuts marked an "abrupt departure" from our tradition of wartime fiscal sacrifice, the authors of War and Taxes demonstrate that such sacrifice hasn't always been all that willing. (Typically, business interests have patriotically chest-thumped while acting sub rosa to minimize any tax effect.) Now often, the Civil War serves to open our tax history, with the establishment of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the imposition of a recognizable income tax, but the authors appropriately focus on the War of 1812 in pushing the nation toward increased reliance on internal taxation, as opposed to tariffs and loans, thereby placing war finance on a sound footing. The contrasting fiscal strategies of the Union and Confederacy are clearly laid out. Further, the recurring relationship between conscription and taxes is well introduced in the Civil War chapter. (One frequent populist refrain: Draft wealth, not just boys of 18.) The authors deserve particular credit for sorting through the various iterations of the excess profits tax proposals in both world wars, as well as for highlighting the tax forgiveness feature of the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943, which was effectively a wartime tax cut. Naturally, we learn the critical impact of World War II in laying the foundation for our current tax system, especially withholding, but also how close we came to a national sales tax. Hardly a dry text, the Vietnam chapter, for example, is almost sad to read as Lyndon Johnson's presidency unravels from a tax/budgetary perspective. War and Taxes is an important contribution to this field of study and one that succeeds in ably interweaving decisive historical events (e.g., the New York Draft Riot, unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915-17, Chinese entry into the Korean War) with the contemporary legislative atmosphere and the pertinent technical tax issues.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for Americans who care about how and why we pay for war,
This review is from: War and Taxes (Paperback)
There are so many books that dissect how and why we fight wars, but this is the only book I have found that analyzes the other half of war: how we pay for it. This is not an academic issue, because ordinary citizens can change the course of a war by deciding to pay for it or to not pay for it. War and Taxes provides a fascinating history of how our country has paid for its wars, and it disproves the myth I was taught in high school that wars must lead to higher taxes. This is the first time that a book on taxes has made my summer reading list, but this book is very timely and eye-opening.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Historical perspective on how to increase spending for a war while reducing the revenues to pay for it,
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This review is from: War and Taxes (Paperback)
The authors of this thoughtful work begin with the proposition that there is no precedent for the expenditure of blood and treasure for the last six years of warfare in the Middle East while cutting taxes at the same time. Then, by going all the way back to the War of 1812, they candidly demonstrate that Americans have not always been especially willing to pay higher taxes to finance the nation's wars. Only with the two World Wars and the Korean War were most Americans readily prepared to make the financial sacrifices required to pay for these major wars. Implicit, but not as explicit as it might have been, is the conclusion that citizens are more easily persuaded to pay for wars involving national survival than limited wars with more ambiguous aims.
One of the authors' central themes is explaining how the income tax assumed a role of primacy among the various other forms of revenue raising. They note how during the Civil War a perception arose that the income tax was the fairest means of financing that war in response to complaints the rich were exempt from sacrifice. Even after the income tax was legitimized by the Sixteenth Amendment just before the United States entered World War I, it remained a tax imposed on upper income citizens until World War II. This book includes a good description of FDR's successful resistance to a national sales tax to pay the skyrocketing costs of that war in favor of a broader use of the income tax. The authors also provide excellent background on how withholding and the standard deduction first appeared at this time. In the interest of a balanced view, there appears to be an error on page 95. The percentages of the income tax as a share of total revenue match exactly the dollar figures in the next sentence. After half an hour of attempting to trace the vaguely cited source in the footnote, I abandoned the effort. On page 109, the fine quotation should be attributed to Speaker, not Senator, Sam Rayburn. Then there's the cover art. This is a book about American wars and American taxes. The WWII vintage tank appears to be a Sherman, but the ship silhouette is unquestionably one on the Royal Navy's King George V class, and the plane looks like an RAF Mosquito. These minor flaws should not deter anyone from reading this book. The information is generally quite sound and the analysis is very informative. The time spent reading it will be rewarding.
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