The Cold War and the Income Tax legal fees. His troubles lead him to investigate the history of the income tax in the United States, and to write extensively on how the assumptions the IRS makes about how and when people earn income map poorly to the actual way a literary man like Wilson makes a living. He dives into the tax code and discovers that "[t]he question of what ought to be taxed and how much and which deductions ought to be allowed has reached a point of fine-spun complexity that — working in terms of a different set of values — recalls the far-fetched distinctions
Hall income tax there were bills to raise state government revenue by reducing the fraction of the Hall tax that is distributed to local governments. The proposals for major changes to the Hall tax failed because of the lack of alternative sources of revenue. The Hall tax is Tennessee's only tax on personal income; the state does not levy a general personal income tax. As of 1974, the Tennessee Supreme Court had consistently held that the state constitution authorized only three types of taxes: privilege taxes, "ad valorem" property taxes, and a tax on income from interest and dividends. In decisions in 1932