Americans Have Always Hated Taxes. The 250-Year Battle Over Your Wallet.

Death and taxes were certainties long before Benjamin Franklin made the observation in 1789.

That hasn’t stopped Americans from pushing back against the certainty of taxes—death is another matter—since the cry of “no taxation without representation” helped spark the Revolutionary War.

Resistance has taken many forms, from the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s to Thoreau’s refusal to pay taxes on moral grounds to the 1,400 elected officials who have signed Grover Norquist’s antitax pledge.

The tension is obvious—an expensive government that needs to be financed versus a populace that works hard for its money and questions the value of sending it off to Washington or the state capital.

The Libertarian Party helped codify the modern antitax stance in its 1972 platform.

“[W]e are opposed to all government activity which consists of the forcible collection of money or goods from citizens in violation of their individual rights,” it reads. “Specifically, we support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”

The end of all taxation is hard for anyone to imagine. But, with taxpayers busy with the hated chore of filing their annual returns, it’s a good time to take a look back at the testy relationship between Americans and taxes.

The nation’s first major tax uprising was so serious it got old George Washington back in the saddle at the head of an army.

It was 1794, and violent protests were raging across the western frontier over an excise tax on distilled spirits.

Washington Reviewing the Western Army, at Fort Cumberland, Md. (Frederick Kemmelmeyer)

The young nation was funded mostly through tariffs. These duties on imports were easily collected at ports of entry, and mainly applied to manufactured products from Britain that were considered luxury goods. Tariffs were uncontroversial.

But excise taxes hit domestic producers. Farmers across Appalachia, who often operated stills on the side, refused to pay. They took up arms, formed militias and attacked federal officials.

The cry of “no taxation without representation” was heard, and talk of secession spread.

President Washington faced a national crisis. When negotiations failed, he called up 13,000 militiamen and sent them marching toward western Pennsylvania, the heart of the rebellion.

Though 62 and looking forward to retirement, Washington was urged by aides and state officials to lead the army. Reluctantly, Gen. Washington suited up once more.

This wasn’t “an argument between genteel parties in Congress,” William Hogeland writes in his history, The Whiskey Rebellion, “but…a guerrilla war on the country’s ragged margin, our first war for the American soul.”

The uprising pitted West vs. East and debtors vs. creditors, and cast suspicion on the cozy relationship between Wall Street and the political class, themes that continue to this day.

It was with a heavy heart that Washington agreed to a military solution.

“[F]eeling the deepest regret for the occasion, but withal the most Solemn conviction, that the essential interests of the Union demand it, that the very existence of Government and the fundamental principles of social order are materially involved in the issue,” he wrote.

The show of force proved sufficient. The protesters melted away, and the tax stood.

Washington retired two years later to Mount Vernon, where—perhaps inspired by the rebellion—he became a successful distiller of rye and corn whiskey.

Henry David Thoreau’s tax protest didn’t draw an army headed by the president. He was arrested by the local sheriff and spent one night in jail, leaving only because “some one interfered, and paid the tax,” he wrote. (Likely his aunt.)

Writer Henry David Thoreau circa 1860. (Library of Congress/Getty Images)

But Thoreau’s show of civil disobedience has resounded down the ages, creating a political legacy claimed by liberals and conservatives, libertarians and Marxists. Disciples include Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau held a deep suspicion of government and all hierarchies, including armies and corporations. He placed the onus for action on one’s conscience.

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right,” he wrote in Resistance to Civil Government, the essay known as Civil Disobedience. “The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.”

Thoreau believed slavery was morally reprehensible, and refused to pay a poll tax supporting the government that allowed it. He did pay a highway tax, which he felt would be of local benefit.

In July 1846, two months after the U.S. invaded Mexico, the tax collector came calling for six years’ back taxes. Thoreau refused to pay, and was hauled off to jail.

“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood,” he wrote in Civil Disobedience. “This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

Grover Norquist hoped to start a revolution with his 1986 Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

The income tax, formally established in 1913, and gradually expanded to include more Americans and to support an expanding government, has been a conservative target from the start.

“No one knows better than the business man that taxes in this country have reached a point where they are destroying the thing taxed,” Barron’s wrote June 27, 1921.

Ronald Reagan was elected president as a tax warrior, and delivered two major reductions. He inspired Norquist’s pledge, which asks officials to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income-tax rates for individuals and/or businesses,” as well as any net reduction in deductions and credits.

Nearly 1,400 elected officials have signed since the 1990s, according to the Americans for Tax Reform website, among them currently 44 senators, 192 U.S. representatives and 17 state governors. Though a pledge database can’t be searched by party designation, signees appear to be overwhelmingly Republican.

President Donald Trump isn’t listed as having signed, though he’s delivered two major tax-break laws in his two terms, promising more. Reducing taxes and regulations has become the central pillar of the conservative political platform.

To be sure, there’s pushback from the other side. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is looking to raise taxes on the rich to fund his social programs. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and others are pushing for a wealth tax on the largest fortunes.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said “taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” suggesting we get what we pay for. In any case, the battle for the American soul, and wallet, continues.

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