A U.S. Tax Timeline...

1913 - The 16th Amendment authorizes income taxes. Congress taxes income over $3,000.

1918 - During World War I, Congress institutes progressive tax rates with a top bracket of 77%.

1919 - Prohibition begins. The commissioner of Internal Revenue must enforce it.

1931 - Gangster and bootlegger Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion.

1933 - Prohibition is repealed.

1942 - The Revenue Act raises tax rates but allows deductions for medical and investment expenses. President Franklin D. Roosevelt says, "In time of this grave national danger, when all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year."

1943 - Payroll withholding is introduced.

1944 - Congress creates the standard deduction.

1954 - April 15 replaces March 15 as the deadline for filing income taxes.

1974 - The Employee Retirement and Income Security Act gives the IRS regulatory responsibility for employee benefit plans.

1981 - Congress enacts a $750 billion tax cut, the largest in U.S. history. 401(k)s are introduced. IRAs become widely available to Americans.

1982 - Deficits soar and tax cuts are repealed.

1984 - Deficits still soar and more tax cuts are repealed.

1988 - George H.W. Bush says, "Read my lips; no new taxes."

1990 - Taxes rise for the wealthy. Observers later suggest that this hike will cost George H.W. Bush the 1992 election.

1993 - President Bill Clinton signs into law a $496 billion tax hike.

1997 - President Bill Clinton cuts capital-gains rates and introduces the $500 child credit.

2001 - President George W. Bush cuts taxes and the IRS mails outs "advance refunds."

2003 - A 10-year $350 billion tax cut temporarily reduces dividend, gain and estate taxes.

When It's 2010, 2015, & 2050...

When it’s 2010, the average life expectancy of men turning 65 will be 81.4 years, while women turning 65 in 2010 will live to 84.1 years.

Mean household income, which is $92,553 today, will get up to $113,361 in 2010 and $133,831 in 2015.

Americans’ taxable payroll which is at $4.7 trillion today will go up to $5.4 trillion in 2010 and $6.1 trillion in 2015.

The U.S. GDP which is at $12.1 trillion today will shoot up to $13.9 trillion in 2010 and $15.7 trillion in 2015.

Today, Social Security revenue is 12.73 cents per $1 of taxable payroll with 11.05 cents of revenue being paid out and 1.68 cents of revenue being put into the surplus fund. In 2010, Social Security revenue will go up to 12.83 cents per $1 of taxable payroll with 11.34 cents being paid out and only 1.49 cents being put away. By 2015, Social Security revenue will reach 12.95 cents per $1 of taxable income with 12.26 being paid out and only 0.69 cents being put away.

Today, U.S. unemployment is at 5.25% and is expected to go down to 5.21% in 2010 and 5.20% in 2015.

The U.S. population, at 288 million people today, will go up to 309 million in 2010, 323 million in 2015, and reach 421 million in 2050.

Within the U.S. population, people over the age of 65 make up 12.4% today, will make up 13.0% in 2010, make up 14.5% in 2015 and make up 20.7% in 2050.

So what else is in store for 2050?

According to Elizabeth Gardner from Financial Planning Magazine:

• There will be "solar" paint with embedded semiconductor particles that can power the electronic devices that are painted with it
• Wearable electronic devices will run on power generated by the wearer’s skin (a process patented by Microsoft in 2004 that will help the company reach $1.4 trillion in market value by 2050)
• People of two or more races will be so common in the U.S. that the Census Bureau will consider dropping the "race" question from the census (the CB will actually drop the question sometime after 2100)
• Printable transistors will be woven into clothing so that people can sell commercial time on their clothing to advertisers
• Distance learning will replace institutions of learning like Harvard for the most part (where annual tuition will be $320,000 in 2050) and individual instructors who teach students all over the world remotely will become the new icons of learning
• California will be forced to institute once again an English-only policy for official city and state signage as ethnically-centered populations have resulted in entire cities having official signs in only that city’s most popular language
• Human tissue, bones and organs will be custom-made using devices that build three-dimensional structures of living cells, revolutionizing prosthetics and the plastic and restorative surgery industries
• The penny will finally be officially eliminated by congress, but other cash and coin in the U.S. will still be around for private, in-person transactions, while a new form of currency that is worldly universal for use over the Internet and electronic shopping methods will have been popularized and replace the U.S. dollar as the defacto standard for the world’s currency
• Land-fill mining companies will be becoming popular, mining old landfills for metals, minerals and other materials whose natural resources have been exhausted
• The youngest baby boomer will be 86, the oldest 104
• Books will be a retro luxury much like vinyl records are today with some pretty common books by today’s standards being displayed in museums while book-binding will become a well-to-do hobby like home wine-making or beer-brewing is today
• To deal with seething social unrest caused by an excess of single men, China will offer attractive financial packages to Chinese girls adopted buy U.S. families to get them to come back to China
• There are 800 million cars on the world’s roads today, but there will be 3.25 billion by 2050