The envelope seemed too flat-pressed to be holding anything at all, much less anything of value. It had been weighted down by other papers on top of it, and you could practically hear it screaming for relief.
Its back was turned up toward me, and the top had long ago been sliced open to get to its contents. I wasn’t expecting to find much in it, but I opened it anyway and slid out the three sheets of paper.
To my surprise, it was the 1942 federal income tax form for a tool maker, filled out in pencil in perhaps his hand. I’d never come across tax documents before and was a little excited about seeing them. “It’s someone’s tax form,” I repeated to the young auction-house staffer behind the glass counters where the papers were stored along with low-cut cardboard boxes of documents, coins, photos, baseball cards and novelty cigarette lighters.
He smiled and muttered something, but his eyes were focused across the room on a man who had put some change into an old parking meter and was exclaiming about how it still worked. The young man was trying to be attentive to both of us, but it wasn’t working.
Who gets excited about an old parking meter? The same type of person, I guess, who gets worked up over someone else’s old tax forms.
The forms, however, hold so much more history about this person and this country than just some old parking meter that took your money (now that I think of it, both had the ability to take your money and offer it up to the government).
So I turned back to the form, which contained the name, address and Social Security number of a man who lived in Philadelphia and worked at a company called SKF Industries. The envelope also contained his 1099 wage forms from the company, for 1941 and 1942.
I was so taken with the 1040 because it offered a connectedness to a past where folks just like me – like all of us – went through the same drudgery of filing our taxes, and paying or getting paid by our government. The form showed that tax filing transcended time and generations, and would likely be with us and our progeny for eternity.
Americans started paying income taxes for the first time in the 1860s to help finance the Civil War. The commissioner of the Internal Revenue was part of the bill that enacted a system of taxes (the Bureau of Internal Revenue became the IRS in the 1950s).
The bill was repealed in 1871, and a flat rate tax was introduced in 1894 but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a year later. The federal income tax as we know it (with subsequent changes) was ratified as the 16th Amendment in 1913. The first 1040 form was established then, although its looks changed over the years. Congress placed a 1 percent tax on personal income above $3,000 and a 6 percent surtax on those over $500,000. The rate rose and dropped between wars.
In 1942, the year of the auction form and just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Congress boosted taxes and expanded the number of people required to file. It also offered deductions for medical and investment expenses.
Taxes were not always required to be filed on April 15. In the 1913 legislation, the date was set at March 1. In 1918, Congress made it March 15, where it stood until 1954, when it became April 15. That day was chosen, according to the IRS, to ease the workload of its workers. A writer for cnn.money.com noted that it was timed to delay our refunds so the government could hold onto our money a little longer.
The tax form at the auction had the March 15 filing deadline. This worker was apparently a single person because he filed only for himself and did not mention a wife in answer to a question on the form. According to the form, a single person or a married person not living with a spouse had to file if he/she made $750 or more. If married, the income minimum was $1,500.
Here’s what the worker wrote on his 1942 form:
He was a tool maker for SKF Industries in Philadelphia, where he earned $2,134, minus $50 for tools. He also donated $50 to a church (possibly his own church) and $5 to the Red Cross’ United Charities.
He had no dividends or interest income, no treasury notes, no Savings Bonds, no annuities, and owned no rental property.
The man paid $32 for the Philadelphia wage tax (enacted in 1940 on the wages of residents), $15 for amusement tax, $11 for auto license and $20 for gasoline tax.
With those deductions, along with a $500 personal exemption and other credits, he owed the government $264.
His answers to a series of questions showed that he filed his taxes the year before, did not get a pay increase the previous year, did not have any nontaxable income and owned no stock in a foreign corporation.
The envelope also included 1099 wage forms for 1941 and 1942 from SKF Industries, a Swedish company with a plant in Philadelphia that made steel bearings and other products for the U.S. war effort. According to the forms, the employee was paid $877 in 1941 and $2,134 in 1942.
The filer appeared to be a simple hardworking person like most of us. It’s not clear, though, if he loved or hated doing his taxes. A Pew Research Center survey in April noted that today, while half of us hate doing ours, a third actually don’t mind – especially if they are getting a refund.
