When was the IRS established?
Internal Revenue Service
The IRS originated with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a federal office created in 1862 to assess the nation's first income tax, which was to raise funds for the American Civil War. The temporary measure provided over a fifth of the Union's war expenses and was allowed to expire a decade later. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue was established. In 1953, the agency was renamed the Internal Revenue Service.
Tax status of Scientology in the United States
The church recruited a retired IRS agent named Paul DesFosses, who left the agency in acrimonious circumstances in 1984, to head the coalition. It provided him with support and investigative assistance to find examples of wrongdoing in the IRS. The coalition's biggest success came in 1989 when its investigations prompted a congressional inquiry into allegations of wrongdoing by IRS staff in Los Angeles. The group claimed to have 5,000 members who were said to be mostly current and former IRS employees. Scientologists affiliated with the coalition demonstrated outside the IRS offices in Washington in 1990 and offered a $10,000 reward for information on "IRS abuses," but attracted little interest.