A smooth and engaging narrative of the development of our most ubiquitous levy and an entertaining exegesis of its scripture, the Internal Revenue Code. Starting with history's earliest recorded taxes, Carson recounts the political and social forces which produced the Sixteenth Amendment and how that single fateful sentence has shaped American life for two generations. With each successive war, he shows, the personal income tax has grown more prepotent. In discussing the tax today, Carson eschews looney schemes for a general palliative; and he doesn't try to crack the Code--or the newest Tax Reform Act--for the greedy reader who wants the formula for turning ordinary income into capital gains, or dross into gold. Though his is not a technician's book, it does rely on authoritative and expert commentators. And it offers such amusing sidelights as how George M. Cohan led the pack in estimating deductible travel and entertainment expenses, and why one provision relating to capital gains was an unpublicized Louis B. Mayer production. Some of the mechanics of tax collection, the way our tax statutes evolve, the constant efforts to harness the law for special purposes, plus all the farce and melodrama inherent in such an odd institution are chronicled just in time for the customary write-offs of Spring.