Abstract
This article is devoted to exploring the legal ethics writings by tax lawyers in a pivotal period of income tax history: 1945-1965, the first two decades of the federal income tax as we now know it. Although the income tax began in 1913, it was World War II that created the modern mass income tax: in 1939 there were 3.9 million individual income tax taxpayers but by 1945 there were 42.6 million. This period was also one of significant progress in the administration of the income tax: the Internal Revenue Code was re-organized in 1954 and, following widespread corruption scandals, the Bureau of Internal Revenue was re-organized as the Internal Revenue Service. Thus, the tax lawyers writing on ethics issues during this period were the first generation to be considering the role of the tax lawyer in the modern tax system. Perhaps the most importance difference between the income tax system then and now is that the system then enjoyed broad-based and bi-partisan support while imposing an extremely high top-end marginal rate of taxation (91-94 percent for most of this period).
Recommended Citation
Michael Hatfield,
Legal Ethics and Federal Taxes, 1945-1965: Patriotism, Duties, and Advice,
12 Fla. Tax Rev.
(2012).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/ftr/vol12/iss1/1