Making the Modern American Fiscal State Law, Politics, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877–1929 Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society Series

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.

Ajay K. Mehrotra is a Professor of Law and History at Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.