Superman, Tax Evader?

By: Leandra Lederman, with thanks to my in-house comics expert, Nickolas Cole

Nick, who’s been a Superman fan since childhood, got me the Oct. 1961 issue of the Superman comic for Christmas. It’s got a story in it billed as “Superman Owes a Billion Dollars” in taxes! Here’s the splash panel:

The basic premise is that a new Revenue Agent “at the Internal Revenue Bureau in Metropolis,” Rupert Brand,* discovers “no record that Superman has ever paid taxes!” (In case you’re wondering, nope, the IRS was not called the “Internal Revenue Bureau” back then. In 1953, it changed its name from the “Bureau of Internal Revenue” to the “Internal Revenue Service.” Perhaps a clue that not to rely on any of the tax statements in the story!)

Brand figures out the quickest way to reach Superman about this apparent delinquency, and explains that even the President of the United States pays taxes (cf. these blog posts), and so must Superman!

Why does Superman owe tax? Well, the story explains that “each year, Superman captures countless criminals, collecting a fortune in reward money!” And not just that, “whenever he digs up buried treasure” [treasure trove, anyone?] “or squeezes coal into diamonds, he earns more untold millions! All that wealth is income!”

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Redacted History: Tax Privacy and the KKK

By Sam Brunson

Tax Lien by Nick Youngson, CC BY-SA 3.0, Alpha Stock Images, Original image at The Blue Diamond Gallery.

A year and a half ago, I learned that in the 1940s, the IRS revoked the Ku Klux Klan’s tax exemption and sued it for almost $700,000 in back taxes. Two years later, the IRS filed a tax lien against the KKK’s assets. While that may not have been the death blow to the 1920s iteration of the KKK, it was certainly part of the death blow.

I’ve since learned a lot more about the whole story, including how the KKK could claim exemption in the first place. I’ve read dozens of contemporary (and retrospective) newspaper articles about the revocation. Heck, I’ve read through a couple Stetson Kennedy archives. I’m dying to write an article about this piece of history.

There’s only one problem: I don’t know why the KKK lost its exemption.

Continue reading “Redacted History: Tax Privacy and the KKK” →

Tax at the National Parks: Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site Edition

By Sam Brunson

Last week, my family and I were at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. I wasn’t terribly familiar with the Tuskegee Airmen before visiting; frankly, their story is amazing, inspiring, and shocking. Basically, Army War College study from the early twentieth century claimed that African Americans lacked intelligence, ambition, and courage, and were thus unfit for the military, and especially unfit to be airmen.

The Tuskegee Institute had an airfield where it trained African American pilots; eventually the government accepted it as a training ground for military pilots. The Tuskegee Airmen proved the Army War College study wrong with a distinguished record of military service. Still, the military in the 1940s was segregated, and these Tuskegee Airmen served in segregated units and, when they returned home, they faced continued racism. Many, tired of what they experienced, went on to join the civil rights movement. And many of them share their stories, through audio, video, pictures, and artifacts, at the NHS. Continue reading “Tax at the National Parks: Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site Edition” →

Federal Hall and Taxes

By Sam Brunson

I spent my Thanksgiving in New York this year, ~~ostensibly~~ to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.[fn1]

Before and after Thanksgiving, my family and I went to various National Memorials in New York. (My Hamilton-obsessed kids were thrilled to make a pilgrimage to Hamilton Grange, even if they haven’t actually seen the musical yet.)

And on Friday, we went to Federal Hall.[fn2] And, like our visit to Alcatraz over the summer, I was surprised (and pleased) to find a tax connection. Continue reading “Federal Hall and Taxes” →