The idea of a negative income tax has been considered in the United States as a method of providing very-low-income families with a stable subsistence level of income in the form of government payments geared into the individual income tax structure. It is viewed as a possible substitute for public assistance or as an alternative to family allowances. The basic elements of this and other so-called transfer-by-taxation plans are (1) a guaranteed minimum level of income adjusted to the size and composition of the family unit, (2) a tax rate to be applied to the difference between the family’s income and some specified amount, and (3) a break-even level of income at the point at which the tax liability equals the guaranteed allowance. Policy makers face the challenge of preventing such a program from becoming prohibitively expensive.

Preferential treatment can be extended to selected private activities in either of two ways: tax revenues can be collected and then spent to support the activities as part of the normal budget process, or preferential treatment of the activities can be built into the tax system, as with the deductions allowed for home mortgage interest. In either case the advantages granted can be seen as subsidies provided by the government.

This way of viewing the issue leads to the concept of “tax expenditures.” Tax expenditures are considered by tax-writing committees rather than by appropriations committees. They are often criticized because they do not receive the same scrutiny accorded appropriations. Once enacted, they tend to take on a life of their own. Moreover, they undermine the perception that the tax system is fair in a way that ordinary expenditures do not. The annual budgets of the United States and many other countries include a tax expenditure budget as well as the traditional budget for appropriations.

Taxation has a rich history. Some of the earliest taxes were consumption taxes, levied against commodities such as cooking oil. Ancient civilizations also instituted the poll tax, with various sums levied on citizens, slaves, or foreigners. Sales taxes date back at least as far as the Roman Empire of Julius Caesar. The institution of a broadly based, systematic taxation of income, however, did not take hold until the 19th century.

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Sir Robert Peel, detail of an oil painting by John Linnell, 1838; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London

The first country to enact a general income tax was Great Britain, in 1799. To finance the Napoleonic Wars the tax was imposed at a rate of 10 percent on all incomes in excess of £200, with lower rates for income between £60 and £200, while income below £60 was exempt. When the war ended in 1815, the tax was allowed to lapse until 1842, when it was revived by the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel. It was again adopted as a temporary measure, this time to enable the government to avoid budget deficits while carrying out major tariff reforms. But succeeding governments, confronted with steadily rising expenditures, were unable to dispense with a tax that was so flexible and elastic, and by the 1880s it was generally accepted as a permanent levy.

At about this time taxation began to be regarded as a social instrument, but it was not until 1910 that graduated rates were introduced and an abatement was granted of £10 per child to taxpayers whose income did not exceed £500. Then came World War I, during which time the standard rate was raised and a supertax imposed on top of that.

In Europe a number of German states began experimenting with income taxes in the 1840s, but it was not until the Prussian reforms of 1891 that the income tax became an effective fiscal instrument in any of these states. Thereafter the reform movement spread to other states, and by 1913 the share of the income tax in all state tax collections had risen to about 60 percent. Until 1920 German income taxes were exclusively state taxes; from 1920 to 1945 they were federal taxes. At the close of World War II, they again became state taxes, and they are now regulated by federal law.

Efforts to enact an income tax in France were begun in the 1870s, but it was not until 1909 that an income tax bill finally passed the Chamber of Deputies, only to be held up by opposition in the Senate. The bill was finally enacted as an emergency measure two weeks before war began in 1914, but it was another three years before a permanent income tax system was adopted.

Italy adopted an income tax in 1864 as one of the first products of its unification. The system introduced at that time was one of “objective” taxes that attempted to tax the “productive sources” of income—i.e., land, buildings, and movable wealth. It was not until 1925 that a nationwide tax on total family income was imposed with graduated rates.

Among the Scandinavian countries, Norway introduced an income tax in 1892 and made its rates progressive in 1896; not until 1910 did Sweden adopt a modern income tax on a permanent basis.