The essay explores how ideas about social justice and economic
performance shaped the debates over federal taxation in the United States
since the origins of the republic. The debates were most intense during
major national emergencies (the American Revolution, the Civil War, World
War I, the Great Depression, and World War II), and each debate produced a
new tax regime-a tax system with its own characteristic tax base, rate
structure, administration apparatus, and social purpose. The criterion of
"ability to pay" and a concern for economic efficiency powerfully shaped
the formation of every tax regime, but "ability to pay" became the more
influential of the two considerations during the national crises of the
twentieth century.
