President Ulysses S. Grant signed a series of laws during his first and second terms that limited the number of special tax agents and prevented or reduced the collection of delinquent taxes under a commissions or moiety system. The public outcry over the Sanborn incident caused the Grant administration to abolish the practice of appointing special treasury agents to collect commissions or moieties on delinquent taxes.
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Revenue Act, which restricted the number of informers who collected taxes from delinquent taxpayers and who received a percentage of commissions, known as moieties, from the collected taxes. This was the first restriction of the federal moiety system that had been authorized by Congress in 1853. The Revenue Act of 1872 was considered a first step towards Civil Service Reform by President Ulysses S. Grant. The Revenue Act restricted the U.S. Treasury Department to contract to no more than three informers to collect taxes from delinquent taxpayers or businesses. The law was initially designed to prevent or reduce the number of false accusations and blackmail by the informers appointed by the Secretary of Treasury to collect taxes. [1] [2] The appointed informers were to receive a percentage of delinquent taxes collected. Grant's Secretary of Treasury George S. Boutwell made the initial informer collector contracts.
In August 1872 acting Secretary of Treasury William A. Richardson contracted informer collector John D. Sanborn who would receive 50% commissions from delinquent taxes collected from railroads, distillers, and others. [3] Secretary Boutwell had been elected to the Senate. An 1874 House Ways and Means Committee revealed that Richardson had authorized regular treasury collector agents to reduce their amount of regular collections so Sanborn could receive more delinquent accounts. Sanborn immediately began to collect taxes by intimidation, receiving upwards of $420,000 in profit commissions which he split with unknown partners. Sanborn himself retained $213,000 in profits. The investigation revealed that the whole power of the Internal Revenue Bureau was placed under the authority of Sanborn. During the investigation, Grant quietly appointed Richardson to the Court of Claims and replaced him with Benjamin H. Bristow. [4]
Concerned over the public outcry over the Sanborn incident, President Grant on June 22, 1874, signed a bill into law that completely put an end to the moiety contract system prohibiting the Secretary of Treasury to appoint special agent moiety Treasury collectors.
The Black Friday gold panic of September 24, 1869 was caused by a conspiracy between two investors, Jay Gould and his partner James Fisk, and Abel Corbin, a small time speculator who had married Virginia (Jennie) Grant, the younger sister of President Ulysses Grant. They formed the Gold Ring to corner the gold market and force up the price of metal on the New York Gold Exchange. The scandal took place during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, whose policy was to sell Treasury gold at weekly intervals to pay off the national debt, stabilize the dollar, and boost the economy. The country had gone through tremendous upheaval during the Civil War and was not yet fully restored.
The Whiskey Ring took place from 1871 to 1876 centering in St. Louis during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. The ring was an American scandal, broken in May 1875, involving the diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. Whiskey distillers bribed officials from the U. S. Department of the Treasury to increase profits and evade taxes. Grant's Justice Department prosecuted members of Grant's own Republican Party who were part of the Ring. The kingpin of the Whiskey Ring was the notorious General John McDonald, whom Grant had appointed Revenue Collector of Missouri District in 1869. Under the leadership of Grant's Secretary of Treasury, Benjamin Bristow, a reformer, the Ring was uncovered and broken up.
George Sewall Boutwell was an American politician, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, the 20th Governor of Massachusetts, a Senator and Representative from Massachusetts and the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue under U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was a leader in the impeachment of U.S. President Andrew Johnson, and served as a House manager (prosecutor) in the impeachment trial.
Benjamin Helm Bristow was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 30th U.S. Treasury Secretary and the first Solicitor General.
William Adams Richardson was an American lawyer who served as the 29th United States secretary of the treasury from 1873 to 1874. During his tenure, the Panic of 1873 swept the nation and caused a depression that lasted five years. He controversially responded by issuing $26 million in greenbacks, which averted the crisis, although there was debate as to whether he had the authority to do so. His tenure was marred by the Sanborn incident in 1874, which involved favoritism and profiteering in the collection of unpaid taxes. He was later appointed a judge, and subsequently the chief justice, of the United States Court of Claims.
The Sanborn incident or Sanborn contract was an American political scandal which occurred in 1874. William Adams Richardson, President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of the Treasury, hired a private citizen, John B. Sanborn, a former Union General, to collect $427,000 in unpaid taxes. Richardson agreed Sanborn could keep half of what he collected. After extorting money from companies to pay back taxes by falsely making claims of tax evasion, Sanborn kept $213,000, of which $156,000 went to his various assistants. After an investigation by the Treasury Department discovered corruption, President Grant signed legislation making the practice illegal.
Farming or tax-farming is a technique of financial management in which the management of a variable revenue stream is assigned by legal contract to a third party and the holder of the revenue stream receives fixed periodic rents from the contractor. It is most commonly used in public finance, where governments lease or assign the right to collect and retain the whole of the tax revenue to a private financier, who is charged with paying fixed sums into the treasury.
Tax amnesty allows taxpayers to voluntarily disclose and pay tax owing in exchange for avoiding tax evasion penalties. It is a limited-time opportunity for a specified group of taxpayers to pay a defined amount, in exchange for forgiveness of a tax liability relating to previous tax periods. It typically expires when some authority begins a tax investigation of the past-due tax.
Grantism is a derisive term of United States origin referring to the political incompetence, corruption, and fraud, during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. His presidency, which lasted from 1869 to 1877, was marred by many scandals and fraudulent activities associated with persons within his administration, including his cabinet, which was in continual transition, divided by the forces of political corruption and reform. Among them were: Black Friday, corruption in the Department of the Interior, the Sanborn incident, and the Whiskey Ring.
Privatized tax collection occurs wherever the state passes on its obligation to collect taxes to private companies or firms in return for a fixed or ad valorem fee. This contrasts with tax farming where a private individual or organization pays off a pre-determined tax debt, and then subsequently recoups that payment by collecting money from the people within a certain area or business.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue(Filipino: Kawanihan ng Rentas Internas, or BIR) is a revenue service for the Philippine government, which is responsible for collecting more than half of the total revenues of the government. It is an agency of the Department of Finance and it is led by a Commissioner.
Carucage was a medieval English land tax enacted by King Richard I in 1194, based on the size—variously calculated—of the taxpayer's estate. It was a replacement for the danegeld, last imposed in 1162, which had become difficult to collect because of an increasing number of exemptions. Carucage was levied just six times: by Richard in 1194 and 1198; by John, his brother and successor, in 1200; and by John's son, Henry III, in 1217, 1220, and 1224, after which it was replaced by taxes on income and personal property.
The Oklahoma Tax Commission (OTC) is the Oklahoma state government agency that collects taxes and enforces the taxation and revenue laws of the state. The Commission is composed of three members appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma and confirmed by the Oklahoma Senate. The Commissioners are charged with oversight of the agency but appoint an Executive Director to serve as the chief administrative officer of the Commission and to oversee the general practices of the Commission.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is an agency of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act.
Ulysses S. Grant and his administration, including his cabinet, suffered many scandals, leading to a continuous reshuffling of officials. Grant, ever trusting of associates, had strong bonds of loyalty to those he considered friends. Grant was influenced by political forces of both reform and corruption. The standards in many of his appointments were low, and charges of corruption were widespread At times, however, Grant appointed various cabinet members to clean up the executive corruption. Starting with the Black Friday (1869) gold speculation ring, corruption would be discovered in seven federal departments. The Liberal Republicans, a political reform faction that bolted from the Republican Party in 1871, attempted to defeat Grant for a second term in office, but the effort failed. Taking over the House in 1875, the Democratic Party had more success in investigating, rooting out, and exposing corruption in the Grant Administration. Nepotism, although legally unrestricted at the time, was prevalent, with over 40 family members benefiting from government appointments and employment. In 1872, Senator Charles Sumner, labeled corruption in the Grant administration "Grantism".
The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, when Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as the 18th president of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1877. The Reconstruction era took place during Grant's two terms of office. The Ku Klux Klan caused widespread violence throughout the South against African Americans. By 1870, all former Confederate states had been readmitted into the United States and were represented in Congress. However, Democrats and former slave owners refused to accept that freedmen were citizens who were granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment, which prompted Congress to pass three Force Acts to allow the federal government to intervene when states failed to protect former slaves' rights. Following an escalation of Klan violence in the late 1860s, Grant and his attorney general, Amos T. Akerman, head of the newly created Department of Justice, began a crackdown on Klan activity in the South, starting in South Carolina, where Grant sent federal troops to capture Klan members. This led the Klan to demobilize and helped ensure fair elections in 1872.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is an office in the United States Federal government. It was established in January 1999 in accordance with the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA 98) to provide independent oversight of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) activities. As mandated by RRA 98, TIGTA assumed most of the responsibilities of the IRS' former Inspection Service.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of administrative arguments asserting that the assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates regulations enacted by responsible agencies –primarily the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)– tasked with carrying out the statutes enacted by the United States Congress and signed into law by the President. Such arguments generally include claims that the administrative agency fails to create a duty to pay taxes, or that its operation conflicts with some other law, or that the agency is not authorized by statute to assess or collect income taxes, to seize assets to satisfy tax claims, or to penalize persons who fail to file a return or pay the tax.
During Ulysses S. Grant's two terms as President of the United States (1869–1877) there were several executive branch investigations, prosecutions, and reforms carried-out by President Grant, Congress, and several members of his Cabinet, in the wake of several revelations of fraudulent activities within the administration. Grant's cabinet fluctuated between talented individuals or reformers and those involved with political patronage or party corruption. Some notable reforming cabinet members were persons who had outstanding abilities and made many positive contributions to the administration. These reformers resisted the Republican Party's demands for patronage to select efficient civil servants. Although Grant traditionally is known for his administration scandals, more credit has been given to him for his appointment of reformers.
William A. Simmons was an American political figure who served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston and chairman of the Boston water board.