Our Tax Dollars

Our Tax Dollars. Make No Little Plans. , While only Congress , the people's elected representatives , can impose taxes and decide how they are spent, the Internal Revenue Service, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, ensures those taxes are collected fairly and efficiently., The IRS building reminds citizens what their tax dollars buy. In the words of the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes engraved over the building's entrance, "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." Revenue collected by the IRS pays for everything from national defense and highways to weather forecasts and food safety inspections., Louis A. Simon, superintendent of the architectural section of the Treasury Department, designed the IRS building to be the least ornate in the Federal Triangle because it houses a bureau, rather than a cabinet-level department of government. The building's neoclassical style is similar to its neighbors', but its only embellishments are four eagles atop shields carved in limestone panels flanking the entrance., Congress enacted the first income tax to pay expenses of the Civil War, and in 1862 President Lincoln appointed a commissioner of internal revenue to collect it. A decade later the income tax was repealed and not revived until 1913, when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution gave Congress authority to enact a permanent income tax. The first Form 1040 was issued that year, and Americans began paying one percent tax personal incomes greater than $3,000, and six percent on incomes greater than $500,000., Other forms of revenue collected by the IRS include corporate, estate, excise, gift, and employment taxes.