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A handwritten envelope for court documents in "The United States v. Thomas Chittenden."

Guilty as Charged

Convicting Vermont’s first governor.
by Gary Shattuck via Journal of the American Revolution on September 26, 2024
Book cover of Counterrevolution by Melinda Cooper.

A Tax Haven in a Heartless World: On Melinda Cooper’s “Counterrevolution”

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.
by Sarah Brouillette via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 15, 2024
A political cartoon lampooning the “robber baron” monopolists’ exploitation of laborers, 1883

When Americans Liked Taxes

The idea of liberty has often seemed to mean freedom from government and its spending. But there is an alternate history, one just as foundational and defining.
by Gary Gerstle via New York Review of Books on February 23, 2022
Skull and crossbones with message reading "This is the place to affix the STAMP."
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Paying Up: A History of Taxation

From the Stamp Act of 1765 to the Tea Party Movement, how have – and haven't – American attitudes about taxes changed over time?
via BackStory on April 12, 2013
Exhibit

The Way We Tax

From municipal government to international trade, these writings examine the political rhetoric, economic theories, and changing policies of taxation in the U.S.
Income tax form

Tax Time

Why we pay.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on November 19, 2012
Home of a Black family living in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, January 1940.

Taxed for Being Black

The long arc of racist plunder through local tax codes is shocking—or, well, maybe it’s not, really.
by Victor Ray via Democracy Journal on June 13, 2024
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé.

Slouching Towards Tax Day

How did taxes become something we "do"?
by Brian Domitrovic via Law & Liberty on April 15, 2024
War tax alternate fund information form.

Death and Taxes

The long history and contemporary relevance of war tax resistance.
by Tyler McBrien via Protean on April 15, 2024
Painting of the Boston Tea Party.

“Boston Harbor a Tea-pot This Night!” 

The dumping of tons of tea in protest set the stage for the American Revolution and was a window on the culture and attitudes of the time.
by Benjamin L. Carp via American Heritage on March 19, 2024
Cover of essays by John Dickinson.

Principled Resistance and the Trouble with Tea

For what did these Americans endure such painful hardship and sacrifice? For what were they taking such a significant stand? Surely, it wasn’t just about tea!
by Robert Guy via Journal of the American Revolution on February 27, 2024
Destruction of tea in the harbor and text protesting the Tea Act.

The Many Myths of the Boston Tea Party

Contrary to popular belief, the 1773 protest opposed a tax break, not a tax hike. And it didn't immediately unify the colonies against the British.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on December 15, 2023
Students on a field trip threw boxes of mock tea overboard at the Boston Tea Party Museum in Boston.

The Boston Tea Party Was a Crime

Opposition to British policy was justified. Destroying 342 crates of tea worth nearly $2 million in today’s money wasn’t.
by Jeff Jacoby via Boston Globe Magazine on December 14, 2023
Colonists boarding the ships and dumping the tea chests.

How the Boston Tea Party's 'Destruction of the Tea' Changed American History

Attacks on private property enraged Colonial leaders and the British public, hardening positions and ruling out compromise.
by Eliga Gould via The Conversation on December 13, 2023
The Boston Tea Party.

Why Some Founding Fathers Disapproved of the Boston Tea Party

While many Americans gushed about the effectiveness of the ‘Destruction of the Tea,’ others thought it went too far.
by Dave Roos via HISTORY on December 11, 2023
Recently freed African Americans receive rations.

The Origins of the Socialist Slur

Reconstruction-era opponents of racial equality popularized the charge that protecting civil rights would amount to the end of capitalism.
by Heather Cox Richardson via The Atlantic on September 26, 2023
Graphic showing a gasoline tank (in green) leaking underground.

The Hidden Cost of Gasoline

Gas stations caused a $20 billion toxic mess — and it’s not going away.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on June 14, 2023

The Middle Hutchinson: Elisha, 1641-1717

By leading the risky but eventually successful financial operation, Elisha justified his name.
by Dror Goldberg via Commonplace on April 4, 2023
Detail of a five-shilling Massachusetts Colony note, the only surviving piece of the colony’s 1690 legal tender.

‘Easy Money’ Review: The Currency and the Commonwealth

Saddled with debt and forbidden by the crown to mint money, Boston’s Puritans dreamed up a novel monetary system that we still use today.
by Adam Rowe via The Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2023
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 3 in Fort Washington, Md.
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The Surprising Roots of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of National Divorce

Greene probably has visions of suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s, not the Civil War.
by Michan Connor via Made By History on March 14, 2023
Graph of tax rates on top marginal earned income vs. long term capital gains, 1918-2020.

Why Is Wealth White?

In the 20th century, a moral economy of “whites-only” wealth animated federal policies and programs that created the propertied white middle class.
by Julia Ott via Southern Cultures on January 30, 2023
An illustration of a family tree that is filled with money.

The Getty Family’s Trust Issues

Heirs to an iconic fortune sought out a wealth manager who would assuage their progressive consciences. Now their dispute is exposing dynastic secrets.
by Evan Osnos via The New Yorker on January 16, 2023
Alexander Hamilton stands guard over the U.S. Treasury building in Washington.

The Constitutional Case for Disarming the Debt Ceiling

The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinkmanship. It’s time to put this terrible idea on trial.
by Thomas Geoghegan via The New Republic on January 6, 2023
The historic campus of the College of William & Mary, drawn ca. 1740 by John Bartram.

William & Mary's Nottoway Quarter: The Political Economy of Institutional Slavery and Settler Colonialism

The school was funded by colonial taxation of tobacco grown by forced labor on colonized Indian lands.
by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Buck Woodard via Commonplace on January 3, 2023
Turbulent drawing evoking mass strikes, urban decay, gas shortages, police in riot gear, chainsaw massacre, and disco.

We’re Haunted by the Economy of the 1970s

Politicians across the political spectrum warn of a return to the decade of stagflation, urban decay, and labor mutiny; but their solution misses the mark.
by Aaron Timms via The New Republic on October 31, 2022
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) at a podium.
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Dark Money in Politics is a Problem. History Points to a Solution.

Everyone would benefit from new rules forcing greater transparency in political donations.
by Bo Blew via Made By History on September 28, 2022
Painting of the drafters if the U.S. Constitution

A Colorblind Compromise?

“Colorblindness,” an ideology that denies race as an organizing principle of the nation’s structural order, reaches back to the drafting of the US Constitution.
by Matthew Wills, Kasey Henricks via JSTOR Daily on September 9, 2022
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Democrats Can Counter GOP Warnings About ‘Armies’ of Tax Collectors

An alternative tradition in our politics has long helped convince Americans that tax enforcement is good.
by Joseph J. Thorndike via Made By History on September 7, 2022
A painting of an old gas station with modern police units in the forefront.

Organized Plunder

In the absence of tax dollars, American cities like Baltimore are now funding themselves by fining the poor instead of taxing the rich.
by Elias Rodriques, Clinton Williamson via The New Inquiry on July 27, 2022
A worker sits with his head in his hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 24, 2008, as the markets endured losses.

How The Neoliberal Order Triumphed — And Why It’s Now Crumbling

Historian Gary Gerstle lays out an era's policies and ideologies, and what undermined them.
by Mario Del Pero via Washington Post on May 6, 2022
John D. Rockefeller Jr., right, was the country's biggest taxpayer in 1923, when public disclosure of tax payments was required by law. President Calvin Coolidge, left, pushed Congress to repeal the disclosure law in 1926. This photo was taken in 1925.

Americans’ Taxes Used To Be Public — Until the Rich Revolted

Thanks to the efforts of wealthy taxpayers, the "big reveal" of the 1920s was extremely short-lived.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on April 18, 2022
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