The U.S. Government Once Ran Almost Entirely on Tariffs

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]In 1835, the United States Congress debated a problem no modern legislature would recognize. What to do with the federal surplus, not deficit, surplus.

[00:00:11]Treasury officials worried they had collected too much revenue from customs duties on imported goods. For decades, tariffs had funded the entire federal operation so efficiently that politicians argued over how to spend the excess.

[00:00:25]Then I found my great-grandfather's payroll stub from 1908, and I started asking why that surplus never returned.

[00:00:34]What I found wasn't about trade policy.

[00:00:36]It was about who pays.

[00:00:38]I found the payroll stub last spring in my grandmother's papers, dated March 1908.

[00:00:46]My great-grandfather worked as a machinist in Pennsylvania, earning $18 per week.

[00:00:51]The stub showed his full wage paid in cash, no deductions, no federal withholding, no line items for government revenue. He kept every dollar he earned. I kept staring at it, not because the wage was low by modern standards, but because of what was missing. The absence told a story about a system I didn't understand. How did the federal government function without taking shares of workers' paychecks?

[00:01:17]I started searching Treasury records at the National Archives.

[00:01:20]What I found wasn't a primitive economy struggling toward modernity. It was a coherent funding system that worked for over a century, deliberately designed to keep the federal government's hands off domestic transactions.

[00:01:32]The United States funded its entire federal operation through customs tariffs, import duties collected at ports when foreign goods entered the country. Foreign manufacturers paid a fee to access American consumers.

[00:01:45]Domestic production remained untaxed.

[00:01:47]Domestic labor remained untaxed. The government never needed to track individual income or require citizens to file returns because it didn't extract revenue from their earnings.

[00:01:58]The numbers are exact. In 1860, customs duties provided $53 million of the federal government's $56 million in total revenue. That's 95%.

[00:02:10]Treasury reports from 1,000 880 show tariffs generating $186 of $333 million total.

[00:02:20]That's 56% with the remainder coming from excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, still not income taxes. In 1890, customs duties provided $229 of $403 million total revenue.

[00:02:35]The Tariff Act of 1789 established this as the foundation. It was the second piece of legislation passed by the first Congress, signed into law on July 4th, just days after the Constitution took effect.

[00:02:50]Not an emergency measure.

[00:02:53]The structural basis for federal funding. Specific rates applied to specific goods.

[00:02:58]Manufactured items carried higher duties to protect emerging American industries.

[00:03:03]Raw materials carried lower rates to keep production costs down.

[00:03:07]Port collectors became critical federal officials. They assessed incoming goods, collected duties, and transferred revenue to the Treasury.

[00:03:16]The system was decentralized because it had to be.

[00:03:19]No mechanism existed for tracking individual citizens across state lines.

[00:03:24]No infrastructure for monitoring domestic transactions. The federal government's relationship with most Americans was distant, mediated entirely through international trade. When I showed the payroll stub to an economist colleague, he called the tariff system regressive and inefficient.

[00:03:41]Foreign corporations passed costs to consumers through higher prices, he said.

[00:03:46]Tariffs distorted trade and protected inefficient domestic producers.

[00:03:50]He wasn't wrong about the distortions, but he couldn't explain why the system needed complete replacement rather than adjustment.

[00:03:58]The 1,828 Tariff of Abominations raised rates so high that Southern states threatened secession. The conflict was real.

[00:04:09]The South imported more manufactured goods from Europe and exported more raw materials like cotton. High tariffs meant higher costs for imports and retaliatory tariffs from European nations on Southern exports.

[00:04:22]The North manufactured goods domestically and benefited from protection against foreign competition.

[00:04:27]Regional interests diverge sharply, but the conflict wasn't about whether tariffs could fund government. It was about who won and who lost under a tariff-dependent system. The mechanism worked. The disagreement was over the distribution of costs and benefits.

[00:04:42]Congress debated tariff rates constantly.

[00:04:45]The Tariff of 1,857 reduced rates.

[00:04:49]The moral Tariff of 1,861 raised them to fund the Civil War.

[00:04:55]The Tariff of 1,890 raised them again.

[00:05:00]The Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1,894 lowered them.

[00:05:05]Each debate centered on how high or low to set duties, never on whether to abandon tariffs as the primary revenue source.

[00:05:13]I found more payroll stubs in the folder.

[00:05:15]1909, 1,910, 1,911, 1,912.

[00:05:25]Every one showed full wages paid. No withholding, no deductions for federal revenue.

[00:05:32]In 1912, my great-grandfather earned $936 for the year.

[00:05:37]He kept all $936.

[00:05:39]The federal government didn't require documentation of his earnings because it funded itself without touching his paycheck.

[00:05:45]Treasury records from the 1880s show something that seems impossible now.

[00:05:50]Debates over what to do with federal budget surpluses, not how to manage deficits.

[00:05:55]How to distribute excess revenue.

[00:05:58]Between 1,000 866 and 1,000 893, the federal government ran budget surpluses in all but five years.

[00:06:08]Tariff revenue was sufficient to fund wars, build infrastructure, expand westward, and operate all normal functions with money left over.

[00:06:17]The official histories describe this era as unsustainable chaos.

[00:06:22]Too much regional conflict, too much economic distortion, too much dependence on import volumes that fluctuated with international trade.

[00:06:30]But the Treasury data shows stable, predictable revenue generation for decades. Surpluses, not deficits. A federal government limited in size because its revenue source was finite and tied to external trade rather than elastic and tied to domestic economic activity.

[00:06:46]I kept returning to one question.

[00:06:49]If the tariff system was primitive and unsustainable, why did it sustain federal operations successfully for over a century?

[00:06:57]Why did budget surpluses occur regularly instead of the deficits we assume are natural?

[00:07:02]Why did it take a constitutional amendment to replace it rather than simple legislative adjustment? The answer wasn't in what the system lacked.

[00:07:10]It was in what came next.

[00:07:12]The Civil War changed the funding model temporarily. And temporarily is the word that matters.

[00:07:18]Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1,000 861 in August, August, creating the first federal income tax. 3% on incomes above $800, a war measure explicitly framed as emergency funding.

[00:07:33]The Bureau of Internal Revenue was established in 1862 to administer collection. By 1866, income tax revenue had reached $73 million, covering significant war costs alongside tariff revenue that continued flowing through the conflict.

[00:07:50]Then the war ended, and the income tax ended with it. The last collection occurred in 1872.

[00:07:57]Congress let it expire without drama, without replacement legislation, without extended debate over whether the nation needed permanent income taxation.

[00:08:05]Tariffs resumed their role as primary funding source. The emergency mechanism was discarded when the emergency passed.

[00:08:12]For 41 years after the Civil War, the federal government functioned without income tax. I keep returning to that number.

[00:08:19]41 years.

[00:08:21]Two.

[00:08:22]If the war had proven income taxation necessary for modern government, why did Congress abandon it the moment the emergency ended?

[00:08:30]Why did tariffs sustain federal operations successfully through the Gilded Age, through industrialization, through westward expansion, without any income tax whatsoever?

[00:08:40]Sometimes I pause and ask myself whether I'm reading the pattern correctly.

[00:08:44]Maybe Congress simply preferred tariffs and the 1872 expiration reflected genuine policy consensus.

[00:08:52]Maybe the system would have adapted naturally without the disruptions that followed.

[00:08:57]But then I look at what happened in 1894, and the sequence becomes harder to dismiss.

[00:09:02]Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act that year, including a provision for a 2% income tax on incomes above $4,000.

[00:09:10]The explicit justification was revenue replacement. Lower tariff rates offset losses with income tax. President Grover Cleveland let it become law without his signature, publicly calling it a dangerous departure from constitutional principle.

[00:09:25]The Supreme Court struck it down in 1895. Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company ruled that income tax constituted a direct tax, requiring apportionment among states according to population, as specified in Article 1 of the Constitution.

[00:09:41]The decision didn't question Congress's power to tax income in principle.

[00:09:45]It questioned the method. To make income taxation permanent and constitutional, Congress would need an amendment.

[00:09:52]That took 18 years of coordinated effort. Political will accumulated.

[00:09:57]Industrial wealth concentrated visibly.

[00:10:01]Public pressure for taxing large fortunes built throughout the progressive era.

[00:10:05]The stated argument was fairness.

[00:10:07]Tariffs fell disproportionately on consumers through higher import prices, while wealthy industrialists escaped direct taxation on their incomes.

[00:10:15]The 3rd of February, 1913, the 16th Amendment was ratified after 6 years moving through Congress and 3/4 of state legislatures.

[00:10:25]The text was precise. Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states.

[00:10:35]42 states ratified.

[00:10:37]Six rejected it. Wyoming pushed it across the threshold on February 3rd, becoming the 38th state to approve.

[00:10:44]Within months, Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1913, implementing graduated income tax rates.

[00:10:53]1% on individual income above $3,000.

[00:10:57]Additional surtax rates climbing to 6% on incomes above $500,000.

[00:11:02]The Treasury Department's own estimates acknowledged that fewer than 1% of American households would initially owe any tax.

[00:11:10]The income tax was sold as a levy on the wealthy, not a mechanism for funding government through domestic labor broadly. The machinery was in place regardless of initial rates.

[00:11:19]The Bureau of Internal Revenue was reestablished. Filing requirements were created.

[00:11:24]The federal government now possessed constitutional authority to track, assess, and collect taxes on individual income across the entire population.

[00:11:33]Rates could be adjusted by Congress at any time without further constitutional change.

[00:11:38]Then came the 23rd of December, 1913.

[00:11:42]10 months after the income tax amendment, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act.

[00:11:48]The House had passed it 298 to 60 on December 22nd.

[00:11:53]The Senate approved it 43 to 25 on December 23rd.

[00:11:58]Wilson signed it the same day the Senate voted. The Federal Reserve Act created a centralized banking system with power to expand and contract the money supply.

[00:12:07]The stated purpose was monetary stability, preventing the banking panics that had periodically destabilized the economy. But a central bank's capacity for monetizing government debt depends on what backs that debt.

[00:12:19]Under the tariff system, federal revenue came from external trade, finite and tied to import volumes.

[00:12:26]Borrowing was constrained by lenders' confidence in a revenue stream limited by congressional tariff policy. Income tax changed the equation completely.

[00:12:35]Revenue was now tied to domestic economic activity across the entire population.

[00:12:40]As the economy grew, tax revenue grew automatically.

[00:12:44]The government could borrow against the future income of its own citizens, and the Federal Reserve could purchase government bonds to expand the money supply, accommodating deficit spending without requiring immediate revenue from tariffs.

[00:12:57]I kept staring at the dates.

[00:12:59]February 1,913.

[00:13:03]October 1,913.

[00:13:07]December 1,913.

[00:13:11]Three pieces arriving in sequence.

[00:13:14]The Underwood Tariff Act passed in October, between income tax implementation and Federal Reserve creation. It reduced average tariff rates from 40% to 26%.

[00:13:24]Revenue lost from tariff reduction would be offset by income tax. That was the explicit congressional justification stated plainly in the legislative record.

[00:13:34]Not coincidence, pattern.

[00:13:37]Income tax arrives in February.

[00:13:39]Tariff rates drop in October.

[00:13:41]Federal Reserve opens in December. The century-old external funding model was dismantled and replaced within a single calendar year.

[00:13:49]By 1920, the inversion was documented in Treasury figures. Income tax revenue had risen to $719 million. Customs duties had fallen to $324 million.

[00:14:02]In 1910, tariffs provided 49% of federal revenue and income taxes provided zero.

[00:14:09]In 1920, income taxes provided 58% and tariffs provided 26%.

[00:14:17]The ratio had flipped completely in one decade. My great-grandfather filed his first income tax return in 1914.

[00:14:24]I found it in the same folder as his payroll stubs. He reported $1,015 in income for the year.

[00:14:31]After the $3,000 individual exemption, he owed nothing, but he had to file.

[00:14:37]For the first time in his working life, the federal government required documentation of his earnings. He had to account for himself to the state in a way his father never had.

[00:14:47]The relationship between citizen and government had quietly changed. The government no longer funded itself through fees charged at the border to foreign entities seeking market access.

[00:14:57]It now required every earning citizen to report their income annually, submit to potential audit, and participate in a tracking system that hadn't existed the year before. That's not adjustment, that's replacement.

[00:15:10]The consequences didn't arrive all at once. They accumulated in layers, each one arriving with a justification that sounded reasonable in isolation.

[00:15:19]World War I required revenue. The Revenue Act of 1916 raised the top income tax rate from 7% to 15%, then the War Revenue Act of 1917 pushed it to 67%.

[00:15:34]Then the Revenue Act of 1918 reached 77% at the top bracket.

[00:15:41]In 5 years, income tax transformed from a levy affecting 1% of households into a system reaching deep into the middle class with rates that politically unthinkable in 1913.

[00:15:53]Tariff revenue kept falling.

[00:15:55]Customs duties provided $562 million in 1920, then collapsed to $308 million in 1922.

[00:16:05]Income tax revenue sat at $2.6 billion the same year.

[00:16:09]The government had discovered a funding source far more elastic than import volumes. The more the economy grew, the more revenue flowed automatically without congressional action to raise rates.

[00:16:20]Then came 1943.

[00:16:24]The Current Tax Payment Act introduced withholding at source. Employers were required to deduct income tax from wages before workers received payment.

[00:16:33]The system my great-grandfather knew, full wages paid in cash with taxes filed separately if owed at all, was permanently abolished. Workers stopped receiving their complete earnings. The government collected its share before the money ever changed hands. The stated justification was wartime efficiency.

[00:16:50]With top brackets reaching 94% and millions of new taxpayers entering the system during the war, quarterly payments from individual filers couldn't generate sufficient cash flow.

[00:16:59]Withholding guaranteed immediate steady revenue. The practical argument was sound. The permanence was not temporary.

[00:17:06]But withholding did something beyond revenue collection. It made income taxation psychologically invisible. My great-grandfather held his full $18 in in hand every week and knew precisely what he earned and what remained his.

[00:17:19]His children received paychecks showing deductions already removed, a smaller number that felt like the whole amount because they never possessed the rest.

[00:17:27]What you never hold, you don't experience as lost.

[00:17:30]I found records in the National Archives documenting the expansion that followed.

[00:17:35]The Social Security Act of 1935 added payroll tax withholding.

[00:17:42]2% taken from wages, split between employer and employee, deposited directly into the federal system.

[00:17:49]Another deduction line.

[00:17:51]Another tracking requirement. The Bureau of Internal Revenue now received reports from every employer in the country documenting every wage paid to every worker. State governments followed the federal pattern downward. Wisconsin had introduced a state income tax in 1911 before the 16th Amendment. New York followed in 1919. By 1940, 30 states had income taxes.

[00:18:14]The model replicated itself at every layer of government simultaneously.

[00:18:19]Multiple authorities now claim shares of income before workers saw it. Each layer justified independently. Each expansion building on infrastructure the previous expansion created.

[00:18:29]Tariffs as a share of federal revenue fell toward irrelevance.

[00:18:33]By 1950, customs duties provided less than 1% of total federal revenue.

[00:18:39]Income and payroll taxes provided nearly 40%.

[00:18:44]The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed in 1947, locked the new paradigm internationally.

[00:18:52]23 countries agreed to reduce tariff barriers.

[00:18:55]The United States led the negotiations.

[00:18:58]The era of customs duties as primary government funding was formally closed, not just domestically but across the developed world simultaneously.

[00:19:06]Sometimes I look for counterexamples to test whether I'm seeing the pattern clearly or imposing it on disconnected facts.

[00:19:13]Hong Kong operated through the 20th century with minimal income tax and heavy reliance on trade-related revenue.

[00:19:20]Singapore structured government funding to avoid deep dependence on taxing domestic labor directly.

[00:19:25]These weren't primitive economies. They became among the most prosperous financial centers in the world.

[00:19:31]The standard argument holds that tariffs distort trade and harm economic efficiency.

[00:19:36]That's accurate.

[00:19:37]But income taxes distort labor supply and investment decisions.

[00:19:41]Every tax distorts something.

[00:19:44]The relevant question isn't whether tariffs create distortions. It's why distorting foreign market access was considered intolerable while distorting domestic labor was considered acceptable.

[00:19:55]The Treasury records from the tariff era keep pulling me back. Between 1,866 and 1,893, the federal government ran budget surpluses in all but five years.

[00:20:11]The 1880s produced such consistent excess revenue that Congress held extended debates over surplus distribution, not deficit management, not emergency borrowing.

[00:20:21]Arguments over what to do with money the government had collected but didn't need. After 1913, surpluses became rare.

[00:20:29]The government could borrow against future income tax revenue.

[00:20:33]The Federal Reserve could monetize debt.

[00:20:36]Spending was no longer constrained by import volumes. It was constrained only by the capacity to tax current and future domestic income.

[00:20:44]The fact that tariffs sustained federal operations for over a century proves income taxation wasn't inevitable. The fact that income tax and the Federal Reserve arrived within 10 months of each other proves they were designed as interlocking pieces.

[00:20:58]The fact that tariff rates dropped immediately after income tax implementation proves the replacement was intentional, not evolutionary drift, Coordinated substitution. What I cannot explain away is the historical framing that followed.

[00:21:13]I have read textbooks from the 1920s and 1930s that describe the tariff era in neutral terms, documenting its mechanics and outcomes without moral judgment. By the 1950s and 1960s, the framing had shifted. Tariff-based funding became primitive protectionism, an inefficient prelude to the sophisticated modern income tax system. The same data reframed as backwardness rather than alternative. I've asked many people how the federal government functioned before 1913.

[00:21:45]Almost no one answers correctly.

[00:21:47]Some guess property taxes. Some guess excise taxes.

[00:21:52]Almost no one says tariffs, even though it is documented in every Treasury report from the period available in the National Archives, referenced in every serious economic history of the era.

[00:22:02]The amnesia isn't accidental. It reflects a narrative that has been told so consistently that the alternative became unthinkable. Why did the income tax and Federal Reserve arrive within 10 months of each other? Why did tariff rates drop immediately after income tax implementation rather than years later?

[00:22:19]Why do modern textbooks frame tariff-based funding as primitive when it generated consistent surpluses for decades?

[00:22:26]Why did withholding become permanent after World War II instead of expiring like the 1861 income tax expired after its emergency?

[00:22:36]Why does almost no one know the federal government operated for generations without taxing individual income? Maybe I'm connecting dots that were never meant to connect. Maybe 1913 was simply the year when several necessary reforms converged by coincidence.

[00:22:52]Maybe the shift from external to internal funding was inevitable modernization rather than coordinated replacement of a system that worked. But the numbers remain. My great grandfather kept his full $18 in 1908.

[00:23:06]His son took home $52 of his $65 in 1948.

[00:23:12]The government stopped charging foreign corporations for market access and started extracting domestic wages before workers ever held them. 95% external funding became 95% internal funding within 40 years.

[00:23:25]The payroll stub sits in the folder where I found it. Nearly 120 years old.

[00:23:31]Full wages paid, zero deductions.

[00:23:34]Evidence of a system that worked differently once, that sustained federal operations through wars and expansions without requiring documentation of individual income, that generated surpluses rather than debt. Evidence that what we assume is natural and inevitable is neither.

[00:23:50]I don't have answers, only patterns. The same year income tax becomes permanent, the Federal Reserve opens. The same year tariff rates drop, withholding infrastructure begins taking shape.

[00:24:02]The same decade the external funding model ends, the internal funding model takes hold. Each piece arriving in sequence, each piece interlocking with the next. Once you see the pattern, you cannot unsee it.