The Internal Revenue Service was created in 1913 with the passage of the 16th Amendment. It is the government agency responsible for the collection of all income tax. Prior to the 16th Amendment, a tax on income was explicitly illegal as set forth in the Constitution. There was a brief time during the Civil War that the government imposed an income tax on the people, but it was later shut down in court as being unconstitutional. In the early days of the IRS, the new income tax was intended to only affect a small percentage of the population, primarily very wealthy individuals who made their money investing or in financial transactions. "Income" up until this point was defined that way.
The IRS and the Income Tax were never supposed to tax money earned from your labor. It was sold to the people as a tax that would only target what we would consider capital gains today, and then only the capital gains of the very rich. Since its inception, the income tax has gone from a tax of about 3% on the financial gains of the very wealthiest peoples, to now a top bracket of 35% that ensnares much of the population. And that is just the federal tax. States also tax income, and tax us they do.
The IRS codes and rules are so complicated that abuses run wild. I ask you is it right to have to hire a team of professionals just to figure out your taxes? Is it right for the IRS to be able to turn your life upside down with an audit because they want to make sure you really have that home office you wrote off? The IRS is intentionally complicated and on their own record state that they use fear and intimidation in order to make people comply. In the least, the IRS can be used to turn honest people into cheats, at worst, people go to jail at the point of a financial gun. Much more can be said about the IRS, but what says it all is a poll taken of Americans who were asked which is the most feared agency in the government. The overwhelming answer: the IRS.