The Religious Origins of the Income Tax's "Standard Deduction"

The standard deduction was designed to make it easier for people to claim their charitable contributions, without itemizing them. Note how the standard deduction early on was fixed at 10% of annual income, the common tithe prescribed in the Bible, not to exceed $500 (the median income in 1944 was less than $2,400):

Almost from its inception in 1913, the federal income tax has allowed taxpayers to subtract from their taxable income amounts spent for particular uses. For example, beginning in 1917, taxpayers could deduct donations made to charitable causes. To claim the deduction, taxpayers had to itemize their allowable expenditures. That itemization imposed a burden on taxpayers, but relatively few people were affected because only about 5 percent of households had to file tax returns.

World War II dramatically increased the reach of the income tax: by 1944, nearly three-fourths of households had to pay the tax. With that expansion came concern about the complexity of tax filing. To simplify tax returns, in 1944 the Congress created the standard deduction, then equal to 10 percent of a taxpayer's annual income, up to a maximum of $500. Taxpayers could select the standard deduction as an alternative to itemizing their expenditures on specific activities, reducing their taxes as if they had made that level of deductible expenditures but without having to comply with recordkeeping and reporting requirements. By taking the standard deduction, people are generally claiming deductions that are greater than their actual expenditures would have been if they had itemized.


Obviously the government made a concession to the entire population, Christian or not, and allowed everyone to deduct their "tithe," whether they made it or not.

Now if we could just get government to take no more, and no less, than 10% from everyone, on everything. The government would have plenty of money, and so would we.

Let me channel my inner Santelli: "President Obama, are you listening?"

So let it be written. So let it be done.

More here.