Links To Various U.S.
Treasury Publications
Secretary of
Treasury Reports
The Annual Reports of the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury are a
good source for information regarding the financial condition of
the federal government and other relevant data. For example, the
Annual
Report for 1919 was published after the effects of WWI were
ending. Large expenditures were made during that war, and laws
were enacted that were administered by the Treasury Department,
such as the Trading With the Enemy Act. Perusing these annual
reports is educational, especially when the information they
contain may address popular topics of discussion that are
erroneous.
From 1790 through 1848, these Reports were published in a series
of 6 books, but a few years later, these reports to Congress were
published as whole books. The below links connect to the
Archive.org website, where these publications may be downloaded.
To download any particular report, look down the right side of the
page where various “download options” appear.
Commissioner of Internal Revenue Reports
On July 1, 1862, as part of a tax act to help
finance the War of Northern Aggression, Congress enacted a tax law
that also created the office of the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue. See
12
Stat. 432, ch. 119. Since then, the Commissioner has
annually published his Annual Report of the Commissioner of
Internal Revenue. The below are links where the indicated year's
annual report may be downloaded from Google Books. When you are
downloading there, click the "sprocket" looking icon in the
upper right corner, and a "pop-down" menu will appear where you
can select a PDF download.
The PDFs for the years 1876, 1877, 1882, 1887, 1888 and 1893 have
the pages in inverse order, but may be read "in reverse."
The Internal Revenue Service makes all of these reports available to
download here.
The Internal Revenue Record
After the War of Northern Aggression, the
Treasury Department was much larger than before that war, and
communications between various Treasury officers and employees
scattered across America and the main office in Washington, DC,
needed a better distribution method. The solution became a
"newspaper-like" publication that was also available for sale to
the private sector. The Internal Revenue Record was thus born.
Below are links to some of these publications as posted on Google
Books. Please remember that if you download these files,
click the "sprocket" looking icon in the upper right corner,
and a "pop-down" menu will appear where you can select a PDF
download.
Vol.
1, 1865 Vol.
3, 1866 Vol.
6, 1867 Vol.
8, 1868
Vol.
10, 1869 Vol.
11, 1870 Vol.
13, 1871 Vol.
15, 1872
Vol.
19, 1874 Vol.
25, 1879 Vol.
29, 1883 Vol.
35, 1889
Vol.
38, 1892 Vol.
40, 1894
Synopsis of Sundry Decisions of the
Treasury Department
Operating a large government
agency enforcing tax laws requires uniformity as to the
application thereof. Today, this is done by regulations, but in
the 19th century, summaries of decisions made at the national
office were the official methods of making those decisions. Below,
please find some of these:
Treasury Decisions
Under the Internal Revenue Laws
Starting in 1898, a new series, Treasury Decisions Under the
Internal Revenue Laws, began to be published. There were 36 volumes
in this series that contained a variety of information, especially
regulations, related to the taxes administered by the Commissioner.
That which is available publicly is linked here:
Google
has also posted some old regulations for other taxes:
Cumulative Bulletin
Starting in 1919, a series known as the Cumulative Bulletin started.
Whenever the Secretary and Commissioner devised regulations for the
income tax, they would be published as a complete set. What this
series did was connect each regulation to its counterpart section in
an income tax act, thus making research easier. All of these
volumes are available here: Cumulative
Bulletins.
