The Tax History Project, a public service initiative of Tax Analysts, has posted seven papers on its web site.  We will blog one of these papers each day this week.

What Goes Around, Comes Around, by Joseph J. Thorndike (Director of Tax History Project and Contributing Editor, Tax Analysts):

Eighty-seven years ago, economist Joseph Schumpeter issued a call for the study of tax history. Fiscal systems, he declared, are central to the political and cultural life of a nation: "The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare — all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else. (Crisis of the Tax State, 1918) Purple prose notwithstanding, fiscal history spent most of the 20th century on the periphery of mainstream historiography. More recently, however, scholars have taken a new interest in the subject, producing a steady stream of articles and monographs on the revenue structures of the modern state. The new tax history has been generally national in scope, reflecting Schumpeter’s conviction that taxes can tell us a lot about nations and their political development. While comparative studies are not unknown — Sven Steinmo published a noteworthy effort more than 10 years ago — scholars have generally respected the national boundaries that traditionally delineate political history.