Some tax history/tax propaganda gems I came across while writing a story for next week's issue of @TaxNotes.

During World War I, federal tax officials worked with compliant newspaper editors to scare the wits out of taxpayers. Some selection from "Dodging Tax Risky" -- an article in The Baltimore Sun that was typical of the threats-couched-in-patriotism genre:

"The nation is reaching out its long arm to touch, with its new income tax, every man in the country who is earning enough to keep him from actual want and make him pay his share for the support of the Government and, incidentally, to beat some sense into the head of Germany."

"There is no use to try to escape this impost," the paper warned. "It can't be done."

"Of course, no patriotic American ought to desire to defeat the law and escape paying his fair proportion of the expenses of the Government which is protecting him in his enjoyment of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'" ...

"but whether he desires to or not, he might as well make up his mind that no form of camouflage that he might devise will deceive the Government and that any attempt in that direction will be a might dangerous thing to try."

"It is a 100-to-1 shot that he will not be able to 'put it over," and he stands 99 chances of paying a heavy fine and going to jail to boot, to 1 of getting away with any such proposition."

"The Government is in a serious mood these days and is not wasting much time or sympathy on slackers or dodgers of the draft, the food laws or the income tax."

"And no one need think that because he is a 'little fellow' the Government will overlook him if he fails to make his return and will not take the trouble to hunt him up. Nothing doing along that line."

"The 'little fellow' is just the man the Government will be looking for and the fellow from whom it expects the most trouble..."

"If there is a discrepancy it is turned over to one of the small army of special inspectors of the Internal Revenue Department with instructions to investigate. And he investigates, all right."

"No matter how long it takes, no matter what may be the expense involved, no matter how far he has to travel, no matter how many people he has to see, he works that case out..."

There is more -- much, much more. But you get the idea. For those inclined, the article in in the Feb. 7, 1918 issue of The Baltimore Sun.