Origin Stories

Love it or hate it, the Internal Revenue Service has been around nearly as long as the United States itself. Its roots stretch back to the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act of 1862, creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and imposing the nation’s first federal income tax. The tax was meant to fund the Union’s war effort — and it worked, bringing in millions of badly needed dollars.

That first income tax was repealed after the war, but the need for reliable federal revenue didn’t disappear. In 1913, the 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to levy a permanent income tax, cementing the IRS as a fixture of American life.

Over time, the IRS has grown from a wartime necessity to one of the country’s most important (and most feared) agencies — managing trillions in revenue, processing over 150 million tax returns a year. That money doesn’t just “power Washington” — it funds the military, highways, education, disaster relief, scientific research, and countless other public services Americans rely on every day.

📜 Did you know? The IRS powers the federal government by collecting the taxes that make programs possible, but Congress decides how the money is spent.