Why do critics want to ""pull up the income tax by its roots""? Why do we have an income tax altogether - especially if its principles are no longer workable and the tax no longer serves its intended purpose? Or are the roots, in fact, still viable? This compelling book seeks answers to those questions in long-forgotten archives of tax history. Drawing on rare records from Congress, Richard J. Joseph demonstrates how the idea of relating taxes to individuals and businesses evolved during 1893-1895, leading in 1894 to the first American income tax legislation. That initial law, he notes, was intended to create a permanent and a fair ""ability-to-pay"" system. With an eye for detail Joseph explores ways in which it would serve as a model for future revenue. He explains how global and domestic changes have rendered it passe. And he shows how much of that early law informs our current federal taxation system. A lively written text makes this volume accessible to both lay person and tax scholar. Its stories of corporate taxation, rarely if ever divulged before, are highly relevant today.

Knowledge is a product of human social systems and, therefore, the foundations of the knowledge-based economy are social and cultural. Communication is central to knowledge creation and diffusion, and Public Policy in Knowledge-Based Economies highlights specific social and cultural conditions that can enhance the communication, use and creation of knowledge in a society. The purpose of this book is to illustrate how these social and cultural conditions are identified and analysed through new conceptual frameworks. Such frameworks are necessary to penetrate the surface features of knowledge-based economies - science and technology - and disclose what drives such economies. The authors employ a trans-disciplinary approach to explore the nature of knowledge systems or environments and examine questions regarding the measurement of knowledge. Lessons are drawn from a variety of perspectives, including the history of information policy, philosophy, economic history, sociology, psychology, information economics, complex systems theory, organisational knowledge theory and political science.This book will provide policymakers, analysts and academics with the fundamental tools needed for the development of policy in this little understood and emerging area.

Why do critics want to ""pull up the income tax by its roots""? Why do we have an income tax altogether - especially if its principles are no longer workable and the tax no longer serves its intended purpose? Or are the roots, in fact, still viable? This compelling book seeks answers to those questions in long-forgotten archives of tax history. Drawing on rare records from Congress, Richard J. Joseph demonstrates how the idea of relating taxes to individuals and businesses evolved during 1893-1895, leading in 1894 to the first American income tax legislation. That initial law, he notes, was intended to create a permanent and a fair ""ability-to-pay"" system. With an eye for detail Joseph explores ways in which it would serve as a model for future revenue. He explains how global and domestic changes have rendered it passe. And he shows how much of that early law informs our current federal taxation system. A lively written text makes this volume accessible to both lay person and tax scholar. Its stories of corporate taxation, rarely if ever divulged before, are highly relevant today.

Knowledge is a product of human social systems and, therefore, the foundations of the knowledge-based economy are social and cultural. Communication is central to knowledge creation and diffusion, and Public Policy in Knowledge-Based Economies highlights specific social and cultural conditions that can enhance the communication, use and creation of knowledge in a society. The purpose of this book is to illustrate how these social and cultural conditions are identified and analysed through new conceptual frameworks. Such frameworks are necessary to penetrate the surface features of knowledge-based economies - science and technology - and disclose what drives such economies. The authors employ a trans-disciplinary approach to explore the nature of knowledge systems or environments and examine questions regarding the measurement of knowledge. Lessons are drawn from a variety of perspectives, including the history of information policy, philosophy, economic history, sociology, psychology, information economics, complex systems theory, organisational knowledge theory and political science.This book will provide policymakers, analysts and academics with the fundamental tools needed for the development of policy in this little understood and emerging area.