As Americans file their tax returns by Monday, they do not have to worry about their neighbors knowing how much they have earned or paid. But for a while in the 1920s, everyone’s tax payments were public records for all to see. And the richest Americans were not happy with that. One goal of the 1924 Fiscal Disclosure Act was to show whether wealthy Americans and large corporations were paying their fair share of taxes. Newspapers published big stories about the first circulation of tax payments. Oil heir John D. Rockefeller Jr. was America’s largest taxpayer, with a tax bill of $ 7,435,160.41, or about $ 123 million now. This was followed by Henry Ford, which paid $ 2,467,400.10, or $ 41 million today. Douglas Fairbanks and Gloria Swanson were the highest paid movie stars. Revenue was not disclosed, although it could be collected wholesale. The Great Apocalypse was short-lived. In 1926, Republican President Calvin Coolidge, under pressure from wealthy taxpayers, called on Congress to end public tax payments. President Biden, in his budget for fiscal 2023, proposes a “Minimum Income Tax for Billionaires” of 20 percent for households with more than $ 100 million in both income and “unrealized profits.” The proposal would not disclose tax payments, but would seek to adapt a “tax code that would result in wealthier American households paying lower tax rates than working families,” the White House said. Critics say the plan would hurt long-term investment. Tax payments were secret after the introduction of the modern federal income tax in 1913. But in the early 1920s, reformers began to demand revelation, as former Republican President Benjamin Harrison had urged in a speech in 1898 on of Wealth “. The former US tax commissioner who went to prison for tax evasion “Every citizen has a personal interest in their neighbor’s tax return,” Harrison said. “We are members of a great partnership and it is everyone’s right to know what each other member contributes to the partnership and what they get from it.” In 1924, Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, of the extremely wealthy Pittsburgh banking family, called on the Republican Congress to reduce the maximum individual tax rate from 58 percent to 46 percent. In return, Progressive senators, including some Republicans, won a bill to make all federal tax payments public, arguing that this would deter tax evaders. That fall, the first tax revenue release from the Internal Revenue Service for 1923 made headlines across the country. Mellon, who had strongly opposed public circulation, reportedly paid $ 1,178,988 in taxes, the equivalent of $ 19 million today. Railway tycoon Frederick Vanderbilt has paid $ 800,000 in taxes, the equivalent of $ 13 million now. Newspapers also published long payrolls by locals, ordinary taxpayers. Annual revelations have revealed that, as now, the super-rich often paid relatively low tax rates after receiving legal write-offs. In 1924, taxes on Chicago Chewing Gum King William Wrigley Jr. plummeted to $ 2,681, or about $ 44,000 today, from $ 865,815 in 1923 or $ 14 million now. Wrigley’s representatives said he had “written off some losses in the last 10 years,” the Chicago Tribune reported. Humorist Will Rogers wrote that for taxpayers, “this publication of amounts” was “a test of their honesty.” He concluded that “income tax has made more liars to the American people than golf.” To prevent the rich from taking advantage of tax loopholes, Rogers suggested, “you should take out a new type of tax every year or two so they do not know how to overcome it.” Not all newspapers were included in the tax dump. The Boston Herald described the report as “outrageous” for violating taxpayers’ privacy. The Minnesota Tribune, in an article entitled “No Aid For Snoopers”, promised to protect the privacy of the ordinary taxpayer: “He should be allowed to embrace his small income, with joy or sorrow, without the public to smell around him. “ He won the $ 314 million Powerball jackpot. It ruined his life. Many newspapers feared that publishing the lists would be illegal. This issue was clarified in May 1925, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the newspapers could not be sued for printing the tax returns. That fall, the Washington Post sank under the headline “The spotlight on 1924 income tax payments.” Tops in Washington was the publisher of the newspaper itself, EB McLean, who paid $ 281,125 in taxes, or $ 4.6 million now. Coolidge has paid $ 14,091 or $ 219,000 now. “In many cases, men who are known to be rich had low returns,” the newspaper said. The Post noted that “there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women making individual returns, evidence of their growth in the business and professional world.” Leading the way in Washington was Kate Willard Boyd, of the Willard Hotel family, whose tax payment totaled $ 31,842 or $ 528,000 now. The Post also reported in alphabetical order the payments of many city dwellers, starting with Aussell L. Alden of 809 L St. NW, who paid $ 58.41 in taxes, the equivalent of $ 960 today. The Chicago Tribune’s state stories of top corporate taxpayers are like a name-calling consumer product such as a washing machine and car: “Maytag Highest Iowa Taxpayer”, Studebaker “Indiana List” and “Nash Tax Is Largest in Wisconsin”. The Tribune noted that a group of locals were missing from taxpayers’ lists: “Unless they have cheated on Uncle Sam, they have no income.” The Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, lamented the lack of African Americans among high taxpayers. “The most astonishing fact about the introduction of black” millionaires in Haarlem “to New York is that they do not exist,” the newspaper said. The Courier later reported that there was a black millionaire, Watt Terry, who owned real estate in Haarlem but lived in Brockton, Massachusetts. A century before January 6, the bomb hearings for another attack on democracy Finance Minister Mellon has led the rich to oppose the revelations. “There is no excuse for this publicity stunt other than the satisfaction of curiosity and the filling of the newspaper space,” he said. Many lower-income taxpayers have also protested the public disclosure of their payments. In 1926, at Coolidge’s urging, Congress cut the tax rate again, this time to 25 percent, and abolished tax disclosures. Senator George Norris (R-Neb.), A leading supporter of the revelation, predicted that the abolition would facilitate “through covert manipulation for large taxpayers to avoid paying the fair taxes they owe by law.”
