How did federal income taxes get this way?

Civics 101

NHPR

History, Government, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We haven't always had a federal income tax, and in the beginning, it only applied to the very richest Americans. So how did we end up with the permanent income tax we have today, with all its complicated rules about everything from pre-tax income to deductions and credits? And what does it actually pay for? DONATE TO THE SHOW! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And I'm to Capadice, and I guess we're just jumping in.
0:06.4	No warm up, no archival, just going right into this. Well, I do have a question for you, but it sounds a lot
0:13.1	like a question we might ask at the beginning of an ad, which this is not. This is a real show.
0:19.5	We are not trying to sell you on anything,
0:22.1	but we are going to talk about something
0:24.0	that you're probably hearing a lot of ads about right now.
0:28.6	And that is taxes.
0:32.1	Oh, dear.
0:33.4	We'll get to that after a quick break.
0:47.4	They say everybody's got different problems. Well, maybe so, but I've got a song about one problem that every one of us have, and that's taxes.
1:10.9	So I solemnly swear I'm not about to sell you a tax service, but I do want to ask to any of these questions sound familiar to you. How many kids do you have? Do you work from home? Did you save for retirement? Did you pay tuition? How about student loans?
1:31.2	Did you get money from an inheritance? Did you buy an electric vehicle? Did you donate to a charity? Did you buy a house? Sell a house? How big is your office? Yeah, I'm familiar with all those questions, Hannah, because I answer them when I file my taxes. And Nick, if you don't mind me asking, how did you do your taxes last year? Well, after I put them off, I used an account.
1:28.1	Right. mind me asking, how did you do your taxes last year? Well, after I put them off, I used an account.
1:31.5	Right. Like you, most Americans need help figuring out how much money we owe the government
1:36.8	each year. About 90% of people use technology like TurboTax or hire a human tax preparer to do
1:43.5	their tax return.
1:45.0	Tax season requires an enormous amount of time, money, and resources.
1:50.2	Not only from the government, but from us, the taxpayers.
1:53.7	It is pretty confounding, Hannah, that we live in a country where you basically need a degree in
1:58.9	accounting or the money to pay for someone with a degree
2:02.4	or computer software just to comply with the law. It's hard to understand how that's a good thing.
2:08.7	You raise a good point, so I want to introduce you to someone named Beverly Moran.
	...

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