Tax Notes contains news, analysis, and commentary on the history of taxation. You can find plenty of accounts of how, when, and why the federal income tax system began in the United States. That’s what the internet is for. What you’ll miss are the insights and analysis of Tax Analysts’ Joseph J. Thorndike, our in-house historian extraordinaire.
Most people think, and rightly so, that the key to good historical analysis of the tax system is in understanding how the past informs (or fails to inform) the present and the future. Thorndike goes further, arguing in “Playing Fast and Loose With Lessons From the 1950s” that using the past for policy lessons is a good starting point, but that this view should be tempered by unknowable cause-and-effect scenarios. He cites tax rates and economic growth in the 1950s as an example. Thorndike covers all the bases for Tax Analysts, including presidential appointees. In “When the Treasury Secretary Is a Tax Dunce,” Thorndike discusses the term of Treasury Secretary Henry J. Morgenthau Jr., who was appointed to the post in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt and had limited knowledge of tax policy and practice. And, anyone bothered by recent scandals at the IRS might read “IRS Stalking of Political Groups Under Kennedy and Nixon.” Here, Thorndike discusses the IRS's targeting of political and ideological groups under the Kennedy and Nixon administration.
Tax Analysts is the source for historical, analytical, and, dare we say, entertaining narratives about a tax system that can even challenge the experts. But the system becomes less murky when practitioners and policymakers are provided with a well-informed perspective on the matters at hand.