1)  The IRS has been collecting taxes since World War 1?

2)  The first tax form appeared during World War 2?

3)  More mistakes are made by filling out a paper form compared to electronic filing?

4)  The first e-filing system was used during the Reagan presidency?

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1)  Fake… Lincoln and Congress, in 1862, created the position of commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay war expenses. The income tax was repealed 10 years later. Congress revived the income tax in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year.

2)  Fake…prior to World War 1 in 1913 the first Form 1040 appeared after Congress levied a 1 percent tax on net personal incomes above $3,000 with a 6 percent surtax on incomes of more than $500,000.

3)  Fact… between illegible handwriting, boxes that are left blank, and human calculating errors, the error rate on paper returns is about 21%, compared with just 0.5% for electronically prepared software which allows for e-filing.

4)  Fact…in 1986.  Only five tax preparers agreed to participate in the pilot program. After collecting data from their clients’ returns, they called up an IRS processing center in Cincinnati and transferred everything to a device called a Mitron, which was essentially a tape drive hooked up to a modem. The Mitron then transferred the data to a Zilog supercomputer that processed the returns.