Original 1040 Tax Form: Only 3 Pages and 1 Page of Instructions

By Christopher Neefus
CNSNews.com
Apr. 15, 2010

(CNSNews.com) – Americans now spend billions of hours each year doing their taxes, or paying someone else to do them. But the first 1040 federal income tax form from 1913, including the instructions, was only four pages long (the instructions covered only one page).

At the same time, less than 1 percent of the population owed any federal income tax and paid at a rate of only 1 percent of net income, according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Today, the instructions for the basic 1040 tax form total 101 pages, and there are 76 lines that taxpayers must fill-in with information.

The government’s ability to collect federal taxes on income was established by the 16th Amendment, which the National Archives and Records Administration has said “effected dramatic changes in the American way of life.”

Prior to the amendment, the Supreme Court had ruled Congress could not impose direct taxes on income (Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co.) without apportioning them to the states—in other words, the government would have to impose larger tax burdens on more populous states.

President William Howard Taft however, proposed nullifying that decision in 1909 by creating a constitutional amendment. The text of the amendment read:

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

The language subsequently passed both chambers of Congress. It then took nearly four years for the requisite three-in-four states to ratify it. At the time, there were still 48 states in the union (Hawaii and Alaska were added later), and 36 legislatures needed to approve the measure. In early 1913, the magic number was reached and the amendment was officially added to the Constitution.

Congress then passed the Revenue Act of 1913, which defined what was taxable “net income” in broad terms as: “gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service of whatever kind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, businesses, trade, commerce, or sales, or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in real or personal property, also from interest, rent, dividends, securities, or the transaction of any lawful business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source.”

A single filer who made any more than $3,000 dollars in net income was subject to the 1 percent income tax.

According to the NARA, the 16th Amendment “settled the constitutional question of how to tax income and, by so doing, effected dramatic changes in the American way of life.”

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which collects the income tax revenue, estimated that about 7.75 billion hours of human labor went into completing all of the 2009 tax forms, up from 6.6 billion in 2005. The work includes completing any combination of more than 1,900 tax forms now offered by the IRS.