Episode 1 of 3

Creation of the Internal Revenue Office

When: July 1862
Where: Federal Government
Part of: Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad and Morrill Land-Grant Acts

The Revenue Act of 1862 created the office of commissioner of internal revenue to fund the Civil War via income tax.

In July 1862, President Lincoln and Congress passed the Revenue Act, creating the office of commissioner of internal revenue. This office assessed the nation's first income tax to pay war expenses, originating the modern IRS. The supplied passages do not name the city of enactment, so the location is recorded at national scope.

Sources

Internal Revenue Service Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-03

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.