The tobacco plant, Nicotiana tabacum. Public-domain photograph.
A 10 percent tax surcharge arrived after prices were already rising.
If money is tight, a surcharge takes money you were going to spend on food and rent.
If you are in the middle, the take-home pay shrinks just as the grocery total swells.
If you have savings, the tax is annoying and the inflation is the real hit to cash.
Congress put a temporary 10 percent surcharge on income taxes in 1968.
It was the bill for years of guns and butter.
It did not put prices back where they had been in the early 1960s.
Source: Revenue and Expenditure Control Act of 1968.