No, that’s not a misspelling…LOL.  Here’s, according to TRAC, the origin of the IRS—the agency we all hate.

From TRAC:

One of the first actions of any new nation is to collect taxes. This was true for the United States when in March of 1791, shortly after George Washington became president, the brand new Congress approved a law establishing a tariff system on selected imports and an internal excise tax on whiskey. In the next year, under the authority of that law, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton established the Office of the Commissioner of Revenue, the predecessor to what is today the Internal Revenue Service.

Washington’s tax shortly led to the new nation’s first serious tax protest movement — the Whiskey Rebellion of 1793-1795 that required the dispatch of a ragtag army of about 13,000 federalized state militiamen to suppress.

The Civil War, and the Union’s insatiable demand for revenue, led to the re-creation of the Office of the Commissioner of Revenue, that by 1863 included about 4,000 tax collectors. Federal tax collections soared — from $28.5 million the year before the war to more than $300 million towards its end. One measure helping swell the revenues was the establishment of the nation’s first income tax which was sufficiently complex that eight years after Lincoln’s assassination it was discovered that in 1864, the then-president had overpaid his taxes by $1,250.

The end of the civil war led to the end of that era’s income tax. But in 1894, under heavy political pressure from the populists, Congress approved a modest new income tax. The Supreme Court immediately declared the tax unconstitutional. But broad political pressure for a more muscular federal government led to the ratification of the constitution’s Sixteenth Amendment on February 13, 1913: “The Congress shall have the 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 creation of the Office of the Commissioner of Revenue in 1862, followed in 1913 by the permanent establishment of the income tax, are two of the three legs that support today’s federal tax system. The third leg came in the middle of World War II when Congress approved a law requiring employees to withhold from salaries and wages the taxes owed by their employees.

Following the war, the IRS was engulfed in a massive corruption scandal that touched almost every level of the agency. After extensive Congressional hearings, the IRS underwent a basic re-organization while at the same time, installing what was then considered one of the most advanced computerized management systems in the world.

In the mid-1990s, the overall performance of the IRS — particularly the way it dealt with individual taxpayers — again became the subject of widespread public concern. The concern led to the formation of a special IRS study commission, a series of oversight hearing by the Senate Finance Committee and the passage by Congress of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. This law authorized a major spending program to improve the agency’s computers.

Just as significant was a basic change in the IRS’s structure. For many decades, the agency had been divided into scores of different districts along geographical lines. Most taxpayers — individual, business, farm, corporation and tax exempt — were processed by the districts where they were located. The 1998 law called for the elimination of this basic geographical system and its replacement by four functional units. In theory, one unit would deal with wage and investment returns filed by individual taxpayers, a second with the returns of small businesses and the self-employed, a third with those of large and mid-sized businesses and the fourth with tax exempt organizations.

In May of 2003, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Mark W. Everson as the 46th commissioner of the IRS. Everson, a Texas business executive who had held several senior positions in the Reagan and Bush Administrations, took over from Charles O. Rossotti.

Reflecting in part the changes that had occurred in the nation’s economic and political situations, the initial vision of the two men about the role of IRS agency was quite different. Rossotti — appointed in the wake of a series of sharply critical Senate hearings and in a boom period when budget deficits were melting — had sought to lead the agency away from its heavy emphasis on enforcement to a more balanced policy where enforcement would be complemented with a systematic effort to make the IRS more hospitable to the taxpayer. The basic idea was that by if it was easier for taxpayers to meet their obligations, that voluntary compliance would significantly improve. Rossotti, however, also argued that enforcement must be an essential component of the government’s tax collection strategy. Just before his 2002 retirement, for example, he said the government would need a massive increase in new employees — 35,000 of them — just to pursue the tax cases it was aware of.

Neither Congress, the outgoing Clinton team nor the Bush Administration were prepared to seriously consider Rossotti’s warning. The dramatic decline in the nation’s economy and the resulting surge in federal budget deficits, however, was a looming reality that demanded some kind of response. (The billions of additional dollars required for homeland security and the war in Iraq may have further contributed to the pressures on the IRS).

So, almost from the first day of Everson’s five-year term, his official statements have reflected the belief that tougher enforcement was required to recover the “many billions of dollars of lost tax revenues.” “We are correcting our course and re-centering the agency,” he told an audience at the National Press Club on March 15, repeating earlier calls for action. The commissioner then outlined his priorities, starting with a a focused attack on the corporations and high income taxpayers who did not abide by the law.

As Everson’s first year in office drew to a close, however, neither the Bush Administration who had appointed him nor Congress had so far seen fit to provide the IRS the substantial boost in financial resources that many experts — in and out of the government — believe the IRS must receive to effectively and fairly enforce the nation.

SOURCE: TRAC

During the early spring of 1863 in Richmond, Virginia—the capital of the Confederacy—thousands of working-class Southern women were struggling as their husbands were either off fighting the Civil War or had died in battle. Then, hyperinflation from spending and a weak Confederate currency drove the prices of food and other goods way up, and families started to go hungry.

The nation had convulsed in division and the lives and futures of America’s enslaved hung in the balance, but frustration also simmered among white people within the Confederacy. Seething class resentment was building among working-class white women at the seemingly fruitless sacrifices they were making. Wealthy, families who owned several enslaved people weren’t affected as much by conscription and the economic struggles. By the beginning of April, it reached a boiling point, leading to one of the largest civilian uprisings during the Civil War. The Richmond Bread Riot became one of several throughout the South led by women.

“They had as many reasons to be mad as possible,” says Edward L. Ayers, a Civil War historian with the University of Richmond and founding chair of the board of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.

“Not only are they losing their husbands, but they are losing them for a cause that doesn’t seem to offer any award for them,” says Ayers, Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities.

Richmond Leaders ‘Alarmed’ by Women’s Actions

The women had tried demanding help from the government—to no avail. In fact, the government had recently made things worse with the March 26, 1863 passage of the Impressment Act, which empowered Confederate forces to seize food and other supplies as needed in the field. So, on April 2, the Thursday of Easter week in 1863, hundreds of women (and some men) took to the streets of Richmond and attacked and raided businesses.

Gregg D. Kimball, director of public services and outreach for the Library of Virginia, says that Richmond leaders were alarmed by the women’s actions, and did their best to downplay it and condemn the rioters. Many said the participants “are from the dregs of society.”

“For women to do something this provocative in Southern society was not something that was looked upon positively,” Kimball says. “It went against this whole notion of the Southern woman that was constructed.”

The Bread Riot Ringleaders

History records two main women who planned and instigated the protest: Mary Jackson and Minerva Meredith. Jackson was a 34-year-old mother of four and a huckster who worked in the Richmond open market selling groceries, and loudly complaining about rising food prices to anyone who would listen. Little is known about Meredith, but she had a reputation of being very tall with a robust, and somewhat imposing presence, Kimball says.

Jackson and Meredith initially met with a small group of women on April 1 at Belvidere Hill Baptist Church. They resolved to meet at Capitol Square the next morning and demand to speak to Virginia Governor John Letcher, and word spread. On April 2, Jackson and Meredith and a group of as many as 200 to 300 women went to the George Washington Equestrian Statue, erected in 1857.

The leaders demanded to the governor’s aide that they speak to Letcher. There are some conflicting accounts: Some say the governor refused to see them, while others say he did speak to the women.

Regardless, the women were displeased with the governor’s dismissive attitude and unwillingness to help them. The protesters, many armed with knives and pistols, stormed off down Richmond’s 9th Street, crying out: “We celebrate our right to live! We are starving! Bread or blood!”

They marched along the cobblestones of 9th Street right by the capitol building, both of Virginia and the Confederacy itself. As onlookers watched the march, hundreds joined in. Some men also joined, most likely as opportunistic looters for merchants like jewelry stores rather than crusaders for hungry families, Kimball and Ayers say.

The rioters—at least 400 to 500 of them, by estimates—plundered warehouses where bacon and flour and other foods were stored, along with grocers and other stores. The Bread Riot name reflects stealing flour for baking bread more than stealing loaves of bread, Ayers explains. The word “bread” served as a general word for food.

Although some injuries were reported, nobody was killed during the incident, which was more like a mass looting and protest than a violent riot. The mayhem lasted about two hours, during which both Gov. Letcher and Confederate President Jefferson Davis reportedly went out to the streets to tell the rioters to stop. Richmond Mayor Joseph Mayo read the protesters the Riot Act—a British edict for stopping insurgents that the American government adopted in the Militia Act of 1792, and individual states personalized. Law enforcement then came in to squelch the riot.

Aftermath of the Riot

Many participants later were brought to trial and charged with crimes for their rioting, but fewer than 100 were punished, Kimball says. A lot of the older and poorer women were convicted, but younger, better-dressed women were not.

Douglas O. Tice Jr., author of The Richmond Bread Riot: Women at War, says there are many conflicting accounts about details, and like war battles, it’s not likely any one person witnessed the whole thing. But the Richmond Bread Riot got women noticed, and the effects were lasting.

“Women, up until this event, were basically ignored as far as their needs and desires were concerned,” Tice says. “This was a desperate act, which took great courage and stamina to put in place. It was an enormous act to acquire the very basics for their struggling families and in doing so gave them some attention into the gravity of their circumstances. … They stood up for once and were noticed.”

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM