Many in the United States assert that there is something profoundly un-American about the collection of taxes, especially by the federal government, and especially when such collection serves a purpose other than the simple collection of revenue. Roman D. Huret's American Tax Resisters provides ample evidence that this point of view has motivated many Americans to act in resistance to taxes, and, therefore, in resistance to the federal government and the redistribution of wealth that the full use of the taxing power by the federal government might allow.

His notion of tax resistance is an eclectic one. He includes accounts of campaigns to send petitions to Congress, carefully orchestrated Supreme Court litigation, and grassroots voter education drives, as well as insistence by high-level policy makers (and their industrialist friends) that taxes be reduced. His choice to examine mostly legal efforts to reduce taxes—mostly through normal political activity—was certainly the right choice, but it is difficult to tell which criteria—aside from the availability of relevant archival material—dictated his decision to include one episode and omit another.

Too many of the possible stories seem omitted. There is only modest mention of the fringe element that has long found excuses and maneuvers to avoid paying the income tax, from those who believe that wage income is not income because it is paid for with labor, to those who become one-family churches and proclaim themselves tax-exempt, to those who claim an impossibly high number of dependents. Although these tax resisters are acting in a realm more outside the legal than most of Huret's actors, their maneuvers have had a substantial impact on the kind of rhetorical political activity that he examines through other episodes.

More troubling is the complete omission of the enormous industry devoted to helping taxpayers avoid tax liabilities by skirting around the edges of tax rules. There is no mention, for example, of the clever carriage builders who, in response to the 1813 version of the federal carriage tax, would sell a carriage without springs, and with it a kit that would allow the owner later to install springs, so that the lower tax on springless carriages could be claimed. Nor is there any of the accounting firms in the 1980s that helped architects understand that their clients would pay less income tax if they built moveable office carrels rather than permanent walls, because the investment credit could be claimed for the cost of the carrels, but not of the permanent walls. Or the lawyers who lobbied state legislatures to create business forms (LLCs) that would avoid the taxes Congress thought it was imposing when it tightened up the corporate tax base in 1986.

Perhaps it would be too much to expect Huret to include discussion of these “lawful” resisters, both because their motives are far less ideologically driven (and more just plain selfish) than those of the resisters whom he does focus on, but Huret never quite develops his ideological themes deeply enough to show us what he thinks connects the stories that he does choose to tell. One wishes that Huret could somehow have created a measure for determining the impact of those who resisted, and the significance of the means that they chose in resisting.

He does emphasize the extent to which tax resisters consistently look back wistfully, to a golden age of republicanism and lower, if not nonexistent, taxes that would never serve any other function than to pay for specific benefits currently enjoyed.

Huret does not really challenge this background story; he only hints at how stubborn and selfish those invoking it are. He could have done much more to make them look just plain foolish and ignorant of the history that they want to build their rhetoric upon. For example, he does not mention the fact that, when the federal government imposed a property tax in 1798, the tax rates were progressive; the more valuable the house, the higher the rate that was applied to that value. Admittedly, this was not a particularly popular tax. Its detractors characterized it as a “window tax,” hoping to paint it with the same unpopularity achieved by an English tax that in fact was just on windows. Apart from insuring that Alexander Hamilton's allies would be booted out of office in 1800 and remain out for decades, this tax had little effect on political institutions, but this feature makes it a bit hard to claim—as many in Huret's cast of characters do—that progressivity was smuggled into our political imaginations by foreign and communist thinkers. Yes, although Huret (2, 3) is among the many who do not realize it, Alexander Hamilton did find a way to design a largely progressive tax on structures and still meet the apportionment requirement, by including a residual tax on unimproved lands that would make up any difference between the amount collected through the structure tax, and the apportioned share. The tax on unimproved land, if it had ever been collected, would probably have enhanced the progressivity of the tax in states in which large tracts remained in the hands of elite speculators.

Huret does tell some wonderful stories. His is the best discussion I have seen about the unlikely combination of actors whose efforts ultimately led to the restructuring of the relationship between the rates applied to single persons and married persons in the 1970s. And he has delved into many previously unexplored archives to tell these stories.

His work should provide others with much material for examining this tax-resistant behavior more systematically.