Making the Modern American Fiscal State
Law, Politics, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877–1929

Making the Modern American Fiscal State chronicles the rise of the US system of direct and progressive taxation.

Ajay K. Mehrotra (Author)

9781107619739, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 September 2014

446 pages, 8 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 2.6 cm, 0.69 kg

'How is a fiscal state crafted? What is fiscal citizenship? It is with these fundamental questions that this fascinating, well-written, thoroughly researched, and convincing book wrestles. This book is not only for those dedicated to the history of taxation; readers with an interest in the history of economics, the rise of professionalism and expertise (particularly of the legal and economic varieties), politics, populism, and propaganda will also find Mehrotra's book thought provoking.' Carolyn Jones, Law and History Review

At the turn of the twentieth century, the US system of public finance underwent a dramatic transformation. The late nineteenth-century regime of indirect, hidden, partisan, and regressive taxes was eclipsed in the early twentieth century by a direct, transparent, professionally administered, and progressive tax system. This book uncovers the contested roots and paradoxical consequences of this fundamental shift in American tax law and policy. It argues that the move toward a regime of direct and graduated taxation marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity - a new form of statecraft that was guided not simply by the functional need for greater revenue but by broader social concerns about economic justice, civic identity, bureaucratic capacity, and public power. Between the end of Reconstruction and the onset of the Great Depression, the intellectual, legal, and administrative foundations of the modern fiscal state first took shape. This book explains how and why this new fiscal polity came to be.

List of tables, charts, and illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. The Old Fiscal Order: 1. The growing social antagonism: partisan taxation and the early resistance to fiscal reform
2. The gradual demise: modern forces, new concepts, and economic crisis
Part II. The Rise of the Modern Fiscal State: 3. The response to Pollock: navigating an intellectual middle ground
4. The factories of fiscal innovation: institutional reform at the state and local level
5. Corporate capitalism and constitutional change: the legal foundations of the modern fiscal state
Part III. Consolidating the New Fiscal Order: 6. Lawyers, guns, and public monies: the US treasury, World War I, and the administration of the modern fiscal state
7. The paradox of retrenchment: postwar Republican ascendancy and the resiliency of the modern fiscal state
Conclusion
Index.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Economic history [KCZ], History [HB]