Tariffs and the Income Tax

Tariffs
Tariffs were used to fund the United States government prior to the imposition of the permanent income tax mainly because it did not cost so much to run the federal government: there were fewer expenses in terms of funding social services, such as Medicare, Social Security or other unemployment. Tariffs brought in sufficient funds for what was required of the government and the government had even maintained a balanced budget for a time. This was the case under President Andrew Jackson, who proclaimed:
Through the favor of an overruling and indulgent Providence our country is blessed with a general prosperity and our citizens exempted from the pressure of taxation, which other less favored portions of the human family are obliged to bear.... How gratifying the effect of presenting to the world the sublime spectacle of a Republic of more than 12,000,000 happy people, in the fifty-fourth year of her existence, after having passed through two protracted wars — one for the acquisition and the other for the maintenance of liberty — free from debt and all her immense resources unfettered! (Eddlem)
Jackson was able to help pay off the entire national debt—just by way of using revenue from tariffs. Of course, the Tariff of Abominations certainly helped: it was an especially high tariff placed on British exports to the U.S. in 1828. The purpose of the tariff was primarily to protect U.S. industries—the purpose was not primarily to gain income (that was only secondary). Under Lincoln during the Civil War, the Revenue Act (1861) was passed that was an income tax, the purpose of which was to help the Union pay for the war against the Confederacy. This Act was repealed, however, in due time.
However, some have noted that the federal government was still perfectly capable of funding itself even when the Income Tax was passed in 1913. Massachusetts Representative Samuel McCall stated that “the chief purpose of the tax is not financial, but social. It is not primarily to raise money for the state, but to regulate the citizen and to regenerate the moral nature of man. The individual citizen will be called on to lay bare the inner-most recesses of his soul in affidavits, and with the aid of the Federal inspector, who will supervise his books and papers and business secrets, he may be made to be good, according the notions of virtue at the moment prevailing in Washington” (Eddlem). In other words, it was primarily a means of tightening control. The federal government had not had much control over the free market that boomed during the days of high tariffs—but with the income tax it could have more sway over everyday citizens and what they did with their earnings.
The benefit of using tariffs to pay off debts goes as far back as the days of the Founding Fathers, who used high tariffs to gain revenue to pay off the debts the nation accrued during the Revolutionary War. Not everyone was happy about these tariffs, of course. Washington even used the excise tax to gain revenue—which led to the Whiskey Rebellion. The point is that these modes of gaining revenue worked and worked still up to the time of the income tax becoming permanent in the early 1900s. Since the standard social services of today did not even come around until FDR’s presidency, the debts were primarily related to the ongoing wars the U.S. committed itself to—including the Spanish American War and the coming WWI. The federal government wanted an alternative income stream that would not put pressure on other nations, since Wilson would be promoting a League of Nations soon enough.
Works Cited
Eddlem, Thomas. “Before the Income Tax.” New American, 2013.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/14268-before-the-income-tax