This Date in History

An Attempt to Redistribute America's Wealth
1935

President Franklin Roosevelt's Revenue Act, which aimed to take a cut out of the nation's fattest pocketbooks, was passed into law. Aptly referred to as the Wealth Tax Act, the legislation increased taxes on rich citizens and big business, while lowering taxes for small businesses. Though the taxes were a seeming boon to a nation mired in the Depression, they raised the hackles of business leaders and the wealthy elite. The president, himself a child of affluence, was branded a "traitor to his class," as well as a Communist. The Revenue Act hardly paved the way for a wholesale redistribution of wealth, but it did seek to rectify the imbalances in the American economy. "Our revenue laws have operated to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR reasoned when the act passed. "They have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."