United States. Internal Revenue. Notice Is Hereby Given, That Duties and Taxes Under the Excise Tax Law of the United States, Have Become Due and Payable, and That the Collector Will Attend in the County of Wyoming, at the Time and Places Hereinafter Mentioned... [caption title and first lines of text]

Towanda, Pa: December 24, 1862. Very good.. Broadside, 17.75 x 12 inches. Old folds, minor offsetting, scattered foxing. An apparently unrecorded and important broadside issued by the Pennsylvania state government during the Civil War, laying out measures for the collection of excise taxes by the newly constituted Internal Revenue Service. The Revenue Act of 1862, passed by Congress and signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, established the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, provided for the levying of excise taxes on everyday goods and services, and adjusted the income tax rates made under the same act of the previous year. It is the second of the act's three main tenets that the present broadside addresses.

Here, H. Lawrence Scott, the tax collector for the 13th District of Pennsylvania in Wyoming County announces that the excise taxes for 1862 are now due. He offers two times and locations for remitting the taxes in late January 1863 (Maynard's Hotel in Tunkhannock and the Central Hotel in Sterlingville) and notifies potential delinquents that a 10% penalty will be added to their tax bill should they not pay it on time. Further, Scott stipulates that payment can be made in "Government funds, good DRAFTS, payable in New York or Philadelphia - par funds - or the common currency of the country by allowing the discount." The broadside is signed in print by Scott at the "Collector's Office, Towanda, Pa., Dec. 24, 1862." The top of the broadside is emblazoned with a patriotic woodcut of a perched bald eagle holding a banner in his beak reading, "E Pluribus Unum."

"On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln signed the second revenue measure of the Civil War into law. This law levied internal taxes and established a permanent internal tax system.... The roots of IRS go back to the Civil War when President 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 The income tax was repealed 10 years later.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. In 1913, Wyoming ratified the 16th Amendment, providing the three-quarter majority of states necessary to amend the Constitution. The 16th Amendment gave Congress the authority to enact an income tax" - irs.gov.

Likely a unique surviving example of this early artifact of the IRS - nobody's favorite government agency, but a necessary one for the Union's efforts during the Civil War.