About this episode

This episode explores the violent history of taxation in America, tracing its evolution and impact on society.

Taxes don't sound like Disturbing History territory, until you learn the trail of blood and power behind them. This episode traces the entire violent history of taxation in America, from the Stamp Act riots of 1765, when Boston mobs tore apart a rich man's home and tax collectors were tarred and feathered in the streets, through the Whiskey Rebellion, where George Washington personally led nearly 13,000 troops against American citizens, to the Supreme Court case where a lawyer called the income tax communism and won. Then comes the great backfire of 1909, when Senate conservatives proposed the 16th Amendment believing it would die in the states, and instead unleashed a taxing power that climbed from 7 percent to 94 percent within a single lifetime. Along the way you'll hear the connection almost nobody makes: how the income tax quietly bankrolled Prohibition, industrialized organized crime, and then became the only weapon that could cage Al Capone.From there the story turns to the machine we live under today. Donald Duck propaganda films commissioned by the Treasury, the 1943 withholding scheme that means most Americans have never once held their full paycheck, a tax code no…

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