It’s Tax Day, but it hasn’t always been and never this much! Author and Historian Billy Federer joins us for the history of taxation in America…it will shock and fascinate you!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on your Morning show with Michael Del Chono.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
It is Tax Day twenty twenty five, and this is
our Spotlight interview of the week. After all, say hello
to William Federer, author, historian, dear friend who I don't
know how many years it's been since we talked. We
should do the first three minutes just on Hey, how
you been, how's the family? Great to have you with us, William.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, Michael grig Toby with you. So.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I don't remember how we met. I was telling the
listeners the story, but we did, and it was just
an instant connection, and we used to do it seemed
like almost monthly interviews on different topics. You've written so
many books, and I was bragging about your books because
they're not real thick and they're not wasted with a
lot of words. They're almost like cliffs notes of historical wisdom.
(00:49):
And one of my favorites has always been the history
of taxation in America. And I encourage people to find
all of your books at americanminute dot com American minute
dot com. But let's talk about the interesting history of
income tax on this Tax Day twenty twenty five, because
it simply hasn't always been so.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Has it.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
There was no income tax in America until the Civil War,
where Lincoln had any emergency income tax.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
But prior to that, the number.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
One way the federal government raised money was tariff taxes.
A matter of fact, the second bill that George Washington
signed into law after being president was the Tariff Act
of seventeen eighty nine, imposed a five percent tariff on
all imports. Alexander Hamilton started the Coast Guard. He was
the Secretary of Treasury, responsible to bring revenue into the government,
(01:42):
and the Coast Guard's job was to stop countries from
bringing goods into America called smuggling without going through the
ports and paying the tariff taxes. England had the Industrial Revolution.
What's that They had coal and coal mines that would
fill up with water, and teen sixty nine James Watt
developed a pump to get water out of the coal
(02:04):
mines and that turned into a steam engine that turned
into factories and Joe Britain could have looms where they
would make bolts of cloth really cheap, but they wouldn't
allow the manufacturing to be developed in America. And so
when we became independent, Jefferson had the tariff and he
writes this April sixth of eighteen sixteen, it may be
(02:26):
the duty of all to submit to this sacrifice to
pay for a time and impost on importation of certain
articles in order to encourage their manufacture at home. And
so it's okay, guys, we're gonna have to pay a
little bit more for these things from other countries because
of this tariff, but we'll be able to build factories.
And that's what happened. These factories sprung up all around America,
(02:48):
and it's called the industrial r.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Some of all up.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
It basically freed women up from menial tasks. So women
would spin thread, we cloth so clothed. Now you could
buy a whole bolt of cloth. Are even ready to
wear clothes? Imagine that. And instead of washing clothes in
a wash tub and hanging them on a clothesline, women
could own a washing machine and a dryer. Instead of
drawing water from a well and carry it in buckets,
(03:15):
they could have water piped right into the house. And
then farm equipment reapers were made where a farmer could
harvest crops with less labor. So food prices went down,
and prior to the Civil War, about sixty percent tariffs
were applied. Franklin Pierce, who was the fourteenth President, said, happily,
(03:39):
I have no occasion to suggest any radical changes in
our financial policy. Ours is the solitary power of Christendom
putting a surplus of revenue drawn immediately from imposts on commerce.
So it was all cariffs, taxes. And then I was
just going to.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Rupt and say this. Number one. Gertrude del Jorno met
Jenny Camuso in a sewing factory in upstate New York.
They became friends, and one's son and one's daughter became
married and produced me. This isn't ancient history, and America
always was in the business of making things, and that's
(04:22):
how we funded government. The notion and you need to
get into this because what people are going to understand
is how you tie history. There's three lenses. I always
look at everything through historical, geopolitical, and biblical. So this
is a very important lens, and we should probably do
this almost monthly together again. But the historic lens would
suggest that what Donald Trump might be doing right now
(04:44):
with this quote unquote tarif war is not destroying our country,
but returning it to its roots and origins. And then
maybe if on the back end of that you celebrate
the tax cuts with the elimination of the income tax,
you wouldn't be doing something radical, genius or different. You'd
be returning to what we always were really until you
(05:05):
could almost get to World War two, because that's when
it gets beyond one percent, and that's when it doesn't
go away. Walk them through the temporary nature. Even when
we did taxation compared to what is today. You work
all year and they tell you how much you keep.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Right, so great questions. So you had no income tax.
To Lincoln, it was repealed. They tried pushing through a
peacetime income tax in eighteen ninety two, but the Supreme
Court declared income tax unconstitutional. The case was Pollock versus Farmers,
Loan and Trust. So Woodrow Wilson, you have a lot
of German immigrants. You have Karl Marx in Germany, and
(05:43):
they're bringing along some socialist ideas of take from the ridge,
give to the poor, and so they're pressuring these politicians,
and so Woodrow Wilson caves to these industries globalists, so
to speak, and pushes through this this income tax. It
was originally a one percent tax on the one percent
riches people, and he World War one quickly started, and
(06:05):
everybody said, well, we had an income tax during the
Civil War, and this is World War one. Okay, but
again it only taxed the top. Today, that would be
only taxing Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry Fink with Black Rocket
didn't tax us. But as you mentioned, then it's FDR,
and he expands income text to everybody, and nobody has
(06:25):
saved up money to pay it at the end of
the year, and so he institutes paycheck withholding.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We'll just take a little bit out of your pot.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Whenever you see your paycheck and there's a little taken out,
that's FDR. That's World War two. And it was an emergency.
They would have billboards.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That was a fight the axes, pay your taxes, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
But what the collateral damage of these high taxes of
FDR was outsourcing. And so the factory owners realized, hey,
I can We're rebuilding Germany and Japan the Marshall Plan
with brand new factories and they can produce up cheap.
I can build a factory overseas and not have to
pay these income taxes, and then the profits from that
(07:07):
using the cheaper labor and the you know lower uh,
you know, no regulations in these other countries. They could
use the profits to lobby politicians to lower the tariffs
even more, and then they could bring their goods in
and this is called free trade. But the question is
is it really free trade? Free? Because a lot of
(07:28):
a lot of these foreign governments realized, hey, I can
give a subsidy to their business so they can sell
it cheaper and put America's factories out of work. And
then once they get a monopoly, they can raise the
price through the roof or threatened to withhold their products
to pressure our foreign policy, like we're going to hold
back precious metals from China unless you came to us.
(07:49):
And it's like this isn't.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
The place we want to be. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
William Fetter is a historian. He's an author. We're talking
about the very topic of his book, Interesting History of
Income Tax. It will not just fascinate you, it will
shock you and blow your mind. When we talk about
dismantling the Federal Department of Education, we're talking about something
that its origins may be rooted in what Jimmy Carter
(08:14):
needed to do to secure the union vote of educators
to win an election to a few things the government
was overseeing, and we thought we needed a department to
make sure it was being handled correctly compared to what
it's become today, a socialization and doctrination, funding, stranglehold and takeover.
And the test scores prove it's a failure. But if
you think that's something that's always been I was a
(08:37):
junior so my education up to junior year was prior
to the Department of Education. But listen, when we're talking
about tariffs and everything and free trade. Look at how
much you paid in taxes and still load on April fifteenth.
That's the cost of free trade. And this isn't even
that long ago either. We're talking about a permanent regress
(09:00):
of tax system. In my father's generation, this hasn't always been.
It's not working. We're thirty six trillion dollars in debt
and the things that Donald Trump is proposing is not radical.
It's a return to what had always been up until
not even eighty years ago, ninety years ago. So I
(09:20):
think that would be shocking to people. And they'll learn
a lot more about this if they get a copy
of the book. Go to American minute dot com.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
What do you.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I mean you must feel and you have books on
all topics which are wonderful, but on tax day in particular,
it's you probably just must thirst for everyone to read
this book, not because you wrote it, because this is
their origin and this is their way out.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah, there's so many different things, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Here's Justice Stephen Field. He is the Justice on the
Supreme Court. In the eighteen ninety four Pollock versus Farmers
Loan and Trust case, he sos the income text law
under consideration is class legislation. Whenever a distinction is made
in the burdens a law imposes or the benefit it
confers on any citizen by reason of birth, wealth, or
religion is class legislation and leads inevitably to oppression and abuse.
(10:12):
It's almost like, let's let's repeal Dei of finances, right,
because there if you attax one class at a certain
rate and another class at a certain rate, it's like,
wait a second, and then he concludes, He goes, it's
the same an essential character as that of the English
Income Statute of sixteen ninety one, which tax Protestants at
a certain rate, Catholics at double the rate, and Jews
(10:33):
at a third and separate rate.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And so.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
The idea was it's unconstitutional. And then you had Woodrow
Wilson pushing through that one percent tax. Ironically, you had
Roosevelt pushed through an inheritance tax because which and then
tast pushes through a corporate income tax, which we regret,
(10:59):
but nevertheless it was Woodrow Wilson and it just.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Give out the rich tax.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, let's just cut to the chase. And how has
it worked out. We've created a government that the American
people claim that they're dependent upon, but it's thirty six
trillion dollars in debt and half of their earnings are
almost when you add them all up, enslaved. It says,
if you've enslaved yourself and taxed your way into the
(11:26):
very oppression that led to the origin of our country.
And it all starts with the father of progressive rism, you know,
Woodrow Wilson in the New Deal an FDR. All right,
so cut to the chase. What is the lesson of
this tax day? How do we get here and how
do we get out?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
I would say, well, you know, when Milly became the
head of Argentina, he cut a lot of the debt
and the globalist stranglehold on his country, and for about
a year it was rocky. But now it's stable and
people are investing in Argentina and it's becoming prosperous again.
(12:06):
And so it's my advice is give Trump's tariffs a
chance to work. You know. One of the other things
was John Maynard Kaines was an economist that invented debt
stimulated economy, and he convinced FDR to go ahead and
have the government go in debt to spend money in
the private sector to create jobs. Those jobs would pay taxes,
(12:28):
and the taxes would pay off the debt. It sounded
good on a chalkboard, but what happened was the government
would go in debt and spend money in their districts
to buy votes, and then they would never want to
get rid of the debt because the next Congress would
want to go more in debt. And here we are,
as you mentioned, thirty six trillion dollars in debt. We
can't even pay the interest on it. And here we
are giving money to Ukraine and countries all around the world,
(12:50):
and it's.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Like we're we don't have that money.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
We're borrowing it from China and borrowing it from our
children through inflation, and they're having to pay this. So
we need to get our house in order.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And you know what, and that starts with returning to
what we don't even do. The federal governments conveniently removed
civics and much of the accurate history in our education system.
But all of us listening this morning, we've got to
go back to history. You have to have that lens,
you have to have that foundation. You cannot understand today
until you understand how we got there. This book will
(13:24):
blow your mind. Interesting history of the income text by
William Federer. You'll find it at americanminute dot com. So
great to reunite. Let's not make it another couple of years.
Let's talk soon.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Miss a little, miss a lot, miss a lot, and
we'll miss you. It's your Morning Show with Michael del Churno.
Previously on your Morning show with Michael Del Chono.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
It is Tax Day twenty twenty five, and this is
our Spotlight interview of the week. After all, say hello
to William Federer, author, historian, dear friend who I don't
know how many years it's been since we talked. We
should do the first three minutes just on Hey, how
you been, how's the family? Great to have you with us, William.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, Michael grig Toby with you. So.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I don't remember how we met. I was telling the
listeners the story, but we did, and it was just
an instant connection, and we used to do it seemed
like almost monthly interviews on different topics. You've written so
many books, and I was bragging about your books because
they're not real thick and they're not wasted with a
lot of words. They're almost like cliffs notes of historical wisdom.
(00:49):
And one of my favorites has always been the history
of taxation in America. And I encourage people to find
all of your books at americanminute dot com American minute
dot com. But let's talk about the interesting history of
income tax on this Tax Day twenty twenty five, because
it simply hasn't always been so.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Has it.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
There was no income tax in America until the Civil War,
where Lincoln had any emergency income tax.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
But prior to that, the number.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
One way the federal government raised money was tariff taxes.
A matter of fact, the second bill that George Washington
signed into law after being president was the Tariff Act
of seventeen eighty nine, imposed a five percent tariff on
all imports. Alexander Hamilton started the Coast Guard. He was
the Secretary of Treasury, responsible to bring revenue into the government,
(01:42):
and the Coast Guard's job was to stop countries from
bringing goods into America called smuggling without going through the
ports and paying the tariff taxes. England had the Industrial Revolution.
What's that They had coal and coal mines that would
fill up with water, and teen sixty nine James Watt
developed a pump to get water out of the coal
(02:04):
mines and that turned into a steam engine that turned
into factories and Joe Britain could have looms where they
would make bolts of cloth really cheap, but they wouldn't
allow the manufacturing to be developed in America. And so
when we became independent, Jefferson had the tariff and he
writes this April sixth of eighteen sixteen, it may be
(02:26):
the duty of all to submit to this sacrifice to
pay for a time and impost on importation of certain
articles in order to encourage their manufacture at home. And
so it's okay, guys, we're gonna have to pay a
little bit more for these things from other countries because
of this tariff, but we'll be able to build factories.
And that's what happened. These factories sprung up all around America,
(02:48):
and it's called the industrial r.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Some of all up.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
It basically freed women up from menial tasks. So women
would spin thread, we cloth so clothed. Now you could
buy a whole bolt of cloth. Are even ready to
wear clothes? Imagine that. And instead of washing clothes in
a wash tub and hanging them on a clothesline, women
could own a washing machine and a dryer. Instead of
drawing water from a well and carry it in buckets,
(03:15):
they could have water piped right into the house. And
then farm equipment reapers were made where a farmer could
harvest crops with less labor. So food prices went down,
and prior to the Civil War, about sixty percent tariffs
were applied. Franklin Pierce, who was the fourteenth President, said, happily,
(03:39):
I have no occasion to suggest any radical changes in
our financial policy. Ours is the solitary power of Christendom
putting a surplus of revenue drawn immediately from imposts on commerce.
So it was all cariffs, taxes. And then I was
just going to.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Rupt and say this. Number one. Gertrude del Jorno met
Jenny Camuso in a sewing factory in upstate New York.
They became friends, and one's son and one's daughter became
married and produced me. This isn't ancient history, and America
always was in the business of making things, and that's
(04:22):
how we funded government. The notion and you need to
get into this because what people are going to understand
is how you tie history. There's three lenses. I always
look at everything through historical, geopolitical, and biblical. So this
is a very important lens, and we should probably do
this almost monthly together again. But the historic lens would
suggest that what Donald Trump might be doing right now
(04:44):
with this quote unquote tarif war is not destroying our country,
but returning it to its roots and origins. And then
maybe if on the back end of that you celebrate
the tax cuts with the elimination of the income tax,
you wouldn't be doing something radical, genius or different. You'd
be returning to what we always were really until you
(05:05):
could almost get to World War two, because that's when
it gets beyond one percent, and that's when it doesn't
go away. Walk them through the temporary nature. Even when
we did taxation compared to what is today. You work
all year and they tell you how much you keep.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Right, so great questions. So you had no income tax.
To Lincoln, it was repealed. They tried pushing through a
peacetime income tax in eighteen ninety two, but the Supreme
Court declared income tax unconstitutional. The case was Pollock versus Farmers,
Loan and Trust. So Woodrow Wilson, you have a lot
of German immigrants. You have Karl Marx in Germany, and
(05:43):
they're bringing along some socialist ideas of take from the ridge,
give to the poor, and so they're pressuring these politicians,
and so Woodrow Wilson caves to these industries globalists, so
to speak, and pushes through this this income tax. It
was originally a one percent tax on the one percent
riches people, and he World War one quickly started, and
(06:05):
everybody said, well, we had an income tax during the
Civil War, and this is World War one. Okay, but
again it only taxed the top. Today, that would be
only taxing Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry Fink with Black Rocket
didn't tax us. But as you mentioned, then it's FDR,
and he expands income text to everybody, and nobody has
(06:25):
saved up money to pay it at the end of
the year, and so he institutes paycheck withholding.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We'll just take a little bit out of your pot.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Whenever you see your paycheck and there's a little taken out,
that's FDR. That's World War two. And it was an emergency.
They would have billboards.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That was a fight the axes, pay your taxes, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
But what the collateral damage of these high taxes of
FDR was outsourcing. And so the factory owners realized, hey,
I can We're rebuilding Germany and Japan the Marshall Plan
with brand new factories and they can produce up cheap.
I can build a factory overseas and not have to
pay these income taxes, and then the profits from that
(07:07):
using the cheaper labor and the you know lower uh,
you know, no regulations in these other countries. They could
use the profits to lobby politicians to lower the tariffs
even more, and then they could bring their goods in
and this is called free trade. But the question is
is it really free trade? Free? Because a lot of
(07:28):
a lot of these foreign governments realized, hey, I can
give a subsidy to their business so they can sell
it cheaper and put America's factories out of work. And
then once they get a monopoly, they can raise the
price through the roof or threatened to withhold their products
to pressure our foreign policy, like we're going to hold
back precious metals from China unless you came to us.
(07:49):
And it's like this isn't.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
The place we want to be. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
William Fetter is a historian. He's an author. We're talking
about the very topic of his book, Interesting History of
Income Tax. It will not just fascinate you, it will
shock you and blow your mind. When we talk about
dismantling the Federal Department of Education, we're talking about something
that its origins may be rooted in what Jimmy Carter
(08:14):
needed to do to secure the union vote of educators
to win an election to a few things the government
was overseeing, and we thought we needed a department to
make sure it was being handled correctly compared to what
it's become today, a socialization and doctrination, funding, stranglehold and takeover.
And the test scores prove it's a failure. But if
you think that's something that's always been I was a
(08:37):
junior so my education up to junior year was prior
to the Department of Education. But listen, when we're talking
about tariffs and everything and free trade. Look at how
much you paid in taxes and still load on April fifteenth.
That's the cost of free trade. And this isn't even
that long ago either. We're talking about a permanent regress
(09:00):
of tax system. In my father's generation, this hasn't always been.
It's not working. We're thirty six trillion dollars in debt
and the things that Donald Trump is proposing is not radical.
It's a return to what had always been up until
not even eighty years ago, ninety years ago. So I
(09:20):
think that would be shocking to people. And they'll learn
a lot more about this if they get a copy
of the book. Go to American minute dot com.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
What do you.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I mean you must feel and you have books on
all topics which are wonderful, but on tax day in particular,
it's you probably just must thirst for everyone to read
this book, not because you wrote it, because this is
their origin and this is their way out.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah, there's so many different things, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Here's Justice Stephen Field. He is the Justice on the
Supreme Court. In the eighteen ninety four Pollock versus Farmers
Loan and Trust case, he sos the income text law
under consideration is class legislation. Whenever a distinction is made
in the burdens a law imposes or the benefit it
confers on any citizen by reason of birth, wealth, or
religion is class legislation and leads inevitably to oppression and abuse.
(10:12):
It's almost like, let's let's repeal Dei of finances, right,
because there if you attax one class at a certain
rate and another class at a certain rate, it's like,
wait a second, and then he concludes, He goes, it's
the same an essential character as that of the English
Income Statute of sixteen ninety one, which tax Protestants at
a certain rate, Catholics at double the rate, and Jews
(10:33):
at a third and separate rate.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And so.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
The idea was it's unconstitutional. And then you had Woodrow
Wilson pushing through that one percent tax. Ironically, you had
Roosevelt pushed through an inheritance tax because which and then
tast pushes through a corporate income tax, which we regret,
(10:59):
but nevertheless it was Woodrow Wilson and it just.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Give out the rich tax.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, let's just cut to the chase. And how has
it worked out. We've created a government that the American
people claim that they're dependent upon, but it's thirty six
trillion dollars in debt and half of their earnings are
almost when you add them all up, enslaved. It says,
if you've enslaved yourself and taxed your way into the
(11:26):
very oppression that led to the origin of our country.
And it all starts with the father of progressive rism, you know,
Woodrow Wilson in the New Deal an FDR. All right,
so cut to the chase. What is the lesson of
this tax day? How do we get here and how
do we get out?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
I would say, well, you know, when Milly became the
head of Argentina, he cut a lot of the debt
and the globalist stranglehold on his country, and for about
a year it was rocky. But now it's stable and
people are investing in Argentina and it's becoming prosperous again.
(12:06):
And so it's my advice is give Trump's tariffs a
chance to work. You know. One of the other things
was John Maynard Kaines was an economist that invented debt
stimulated economy, and he convinced FDR to go ahead and
have the government go in debt to spend money in
the private sector to create jobs. Those jobs would pay taxes,
(12:28):
and the taxes would pay off the debt. It sounded
good on a chalkboard, but what happened was the government
would go in debt and spend money in their districts
to buy votes, and then they would never want to
get rid of the debt because the next Congress would
want to go more in debt. And here we are,
as you mentioned, thirty six trillion dollars in debt. We
can't even pay the interest on it. And here we
are giving money to Ukraine and countries all around the world,
(12:50):
and it's.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Like we're we don't have that money.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
We're borrowing it from China and borrowing it from our
children through inflation, and they're having to pay this. So
we need to get our house in order.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And you know what, and that starts with returning to
what we don't even do. The federal governments conveniently removed
civics and much of the accurate history in our education system.
But all of us listening this morning, we've got to
go back to history. You have to have that lens,
you have to have that foundation. You cannot understand today
until you understand how we got there. This book will
(13:24):
blow your mind. Interesting history of the income text by
William Federer. You'll find it at americanminute dot com. So
great to reunite. Let's not make it another couple of years.
Let's talk soon.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Miss a little, miss a lot, miss a lot, and
we'll miss you. It's your Morning Show with Michael del Churno.
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