“A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man's counting house . . . The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hailed into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state . . . Who of us who have had knowledge of the doings of the Federal officials in the Internal Revenue service can be blind to what will follow?”
Virginia House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting what would happen if a federal income tax became law.
What is so sad is that today we have Republicans, and some Conservatives, and some people who claim they are all above that DEMANDING the most onerous and abusive of taxes be laid on the poor without any pity.
They call it 'having skin in the game'.