The idea of levying a tax on the wealthy has become more popular, and critics have attacked the idea as "un-American."

But the history of progressive taxation in the US dates back to the founding of the country.

So perhaps a wealth tax is a return to the Founders' principles, rather than a radical change.

Tom Shachtman is an author. His most recent book The Founding Fortunes: How the Wealthy Paid for and Profited From America's Revolution, was just published by Saint Martin's Press.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

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Although more than 70% of the federal government's income from personal taxes is paid by people making above $100,000 a year, progressive taxation has been in decline for the last 75 years.

Currently the 400 wealthiest Americans, billionaires all, pay a smaller percent of their income in taxes (around 23%, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman) than do Americans with incomes nearer the national average income of $69,000 a year (a 25% to 30% rate).

So while critics have attacked the calls for increasing taxes on the wealthy and for making the tax code more progressive "un-American," the policy shouldn't be thought of as a new idea but as a return to the Founders' principles.

A long historical precedent

Today we judge the Founders to have been quite conservative in their economic predilections. But they embraced progressive taxation.

Before the US was born, taxing the rich in the colonies proportionately more than the poor was already an established principle. Colonial legislatures repeatedly assessed local taxes based on property ownership, with larger amounts owed for larger properties.

During the Revolutionary War this progressivism continued, but only on the state level, since national taxation was out of the question for a revolution whose trigger phrase was "no taxation without representation." Only curmudgeons like the Philadelphia pamphleteer Pelatiah Webster grumbled that the new country was getting itself and its currency in a bind by refusing to levy direct taxes.

The Articles of Confederation, as considered by Continental Congresses from 1776 onward, featured a subtly progressive tax plan. It had states bearing their portion of the national burden in proportion to each state's number of inhabitants, and just then, the most populous states were the wealthiest ones, so they would pay more. But Southern states objected to counting slaves as inhabitants for assessment purposes, so the Articles were tabled until 1781.

Tariffs as taxes on the wealthy

As the US began to take shape, the idea of progressive taxation was central to its financing.

In the last stages of the Revolutionary War, "nationalists" in Congress, led by Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton, tried and failed to get the states to agree to a national taxation power so that a federal government could properly run the country. In 1787, George Washington labeled that lack of taxation power one of the "defects" that he hoped the Constitutional Convention would "cure." The federal government's power of taxation was assured by the Constitution.

The first Congress elected under that Constitution agreed with Alexander Hamilton's plan to fund the government entirely from tariff income. Pelatiah Webster had long advocated placing the heaviest import duties on goods "the consumption of which are least necessary to the community," and the lightest on those "the use and consumption of which are the most necessary to the community."

The legislators now agreed, levying the highest duties on carriages and other items used almost exclusively by the wealthy. But since only about a thousand families a year could afford a carriage, income from a "wealth-tax" tariff would not provide enough to fund the government. So while Congress sought to shield the poor from the burden of tariffs – radicals such as Aedanus Burke of South Carolina wanted to entirely exempt everyday items such as salt and sugar – the legislators found it necessary to impose small tariffs on these and on other widely used items.

Throughout the next few years, annual revisions to the tariffs continued to make the tax system more progressive. When Hamilton, on his way into retirement, sought to increase tariffs generally, Congress did so but placed the heaviest burdens on those imported products used almost exclusively by the wealthy – silks, china, glass, wine, and medicines.

In embedding progressive taxation into its central-government funding, the early Congresses were honoring an idea central to the Revolution: that this country depends for its survival and growth as much on the thriving of its non-wealthy as on the enrichment of its already-wealthy citizens.

The most progressive tax yet

In mid-1798, with a possible war with France looming, Congress passed the most far-reaching and progressive of taxes in this era.

Eighteen months earlier, Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr. had proposed a direct tax on property, to fund an army that could meet or head off an expected French invasion. Both the US House and Senate then consisted mainly of upper middle class, substantial property owners. That makes all the more remarkable their earnest search for the best ways to protect the poor from having to pay while ensuring that the richest would pay the most.

In its final version this first direct tax exempted all real property valued below $100 -- virtually every simple dwelling in America -- and levied less than $1 of tax on the majority of properties, those valued between $100-$500. For properties valued in excess of $500, tax rates were higher and went up sharply. Owners of slaves were charged 50¢ apiece for those aged twelve to fifty. Instructions to the tax assessors included counting the number of a structure's windows, giving rise to the tax's nickname, "the windowpane tax." This most progressive of taxes worked like a charm, easily raising the expected $2 million, due to the tax's justness, it's universality, and because taxpayers knew precisely what the proceeds would be used for.

That understanding of the need and reasons for progressive taxation continued to hold in America through the 19th century and the 20th, until the end of World War II. Then it began to retreat. If we are today to continue to honor the Founders' ideals, we must recognize that among them is the tenet that this country's

survival and growth depends as much on the non-wealthy as on the wealthy, and find a way to return to a more fully progressive tax system.