Truth Matters When the United States Constitution was written there was no provision for a federal income tax. The U. S. Government funded itself primarily through levying tariffs and excise taxes. One attempt at levying an income tax was made (to fund the military) in 1861 during the era of martial law and the chaos of the Civil War, but that was repealed shortly after the war ended and the nation reunited. There was another attempt in 1894 when the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act inserted a provision imposing such a tax. That income tax, however, was struck down by the Supreme Court ...