President Abraham Lincoln Implements the First Progressive Income Tax in the U.S.

He appoints a Vermont attorney to assist with collections in that state

The Revenue Act of 1862 was a bill that Congress passed to help fund the Civil War, and which was signed by President Lincoln into law on July 1, 1862. This 1862 act was an expansion of the first U.S. income tax established under the previous Revenue Act of 1861. The 1862 act established the office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a department in charge of the collection of taxes, and levied excise taxes on many items consumed and traded in the United States. It is notable for introducing the first progressive income tax in the U.S. and for establishing a separate federal tax bureaucracy that would eventually become the modern Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Carlos Baxter was a Vermont attorney and graduate of the University of Vermont. His office was was built in 1859 and located in what was known as Baxter’s Block, with its large cornice and Italianate cast iron lintels. His brother was the influential US Congressman Portus Baxter, who chaired the House Committee on Expenditures in the Navy Department. Congressman Baxter and his wife spent so much time in the hospitals in and around Washington tending to wounded soldiers that he was called “the soldiers’ friend”. Carlos’s nephew William was Chief Medical Officer of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, so Carlos was well-connected.

In 1863, President Lincoln appointed him to the Treasury Department’s new Internal Revenue unit. Document signed, Washington, March 6, 1863, naming Carlos Baxter the “Collector of Internal Revenue for the Third Collection District of Vermont.” The document is countersigned by Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury.