I Paid My Income Tax Today

Posted by Anita Folsom

“I paid my income tax today.

I never felt so proud before,

To be right there with the millions more

Who paid their income tax today.” (Song lyrics by Irving Berlin)

Are you ready to sing those lyrics by the tax deadline on April 15? Probably not.

This musical ditty was actually a propaganda masterpiece used by the federal government during World War II. Knowing that the war would cost billions of dollars, President Franklin Roosevelt used the war emergency to push a new tax program through the federal bureaucracy. But how could FDR’s administration whip up patriotic fervor and encourage Americans to pay so much in taxes? The answer: Use all types of media with the message that paying taxes would help to win the war.  Two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, composer Irving Berlin penned a tune about paying taxes entitled “I Paid My Income Tax Today,” and the government asked radio stations across the country to play the recording early and often. The goal: remind the public to pay their income taxes before the new deadline of March 15, 1942. (For more information and more verses to Berlin’s lyrics, see FDR Goes to War, Chapter 9.)......The income tax for most Americans was kept in place and even expanded. Withholding became an integral part of American society. And the battle for freedom from usurious taxes continues to this day.....To Read More.....