In a previous post, I noted that this year was the 100th anniversary of the federal income tax, which came into permanent existence in 1913. This year is also the 70th anniversary of the institution of tax withholding.

Before 1943, all taxpayers paid their income taxes in a lump sum no later than March 15 the following year, although quarterly payments were permitted. This was not that much of a burden because few people paid any federal income taxes – on the eve of World War II just 4 percent of the population did. And the bulk of those were very well to do.

But the war increased the need for federal revenue. Consideration was given to a national consumption tax to raise the money, but this idea was rejected in favor of a vastly broader income tax.

This brought into the income tax net millions of Americans who had no familiarity with it, were baffled by its complexity and lacked the savings to pay their annual tax bill in a lump sum. The Treasury Department said it believed that tax withholding was essential to make the wartime income tax work.

But there was stiff resistance to withholding, because some taxpayers would in effect have to pay their taxes twice in one year – withholding for the current year’s taxes and the lump-sum payment for the previous year’s taxes.

In 1942, the businessman Beardsley Ruml suggested that the value of tax withholding was so great that it was worth having the federal government give up one year’s lump sum tax payment in return for institution of withholding. It was fair, would dampen taxpayer opposition and not really deprive the Treasury of any cash flow, he contended.

In his January 1943 budget message, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed for what he called “pay-as-you-go” taxation. Withholding was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee in March without the Ruml proposal. But Republicans championed the tax cancellation idea.

As the Ruml plan gained support in Congress, Roosevelt adamantly opposed it. It was unfair, he said in a May 17, 1943, letter to Congress, because it mainly benefited the wealthy and was inflationary.

The House initially rejected the Ruml plan, but it had more support in the Senate. Eventually, both houses approved it in early June 1943, forgiving 75 percent of the lump-sum payment otherwise due. The legislation was known as the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. Tax withholding began on July 1, 1943, the start of the new fiscal year in those days.

This did not end Congressional debate on withholding. Almost immediately, Congress took up new legislation to ease the compliance burden. One popular idea would have allowed up to 30 million taxpayers with only wage income to avoid filing returns. The final legislation, enacted in 1944, did not, however, eliminate the need for anyone to file returns; it only simplified the documentation taxpayers needed to keep and created the standard deduction.

Another provision of the 1944 bill allowed the Internal Revenue Service to do the calculation of one’s tax liability. Few people realize that this option still exists; few taxpayers take advantage of it. (See Page 204 in the I.R.S. publication “Your Federal Income Tax.”)

Not surprisingly, conservatives strongly criticized withholding. A common argument was that the government had imposed much of its tax collection responsibility on the taxpayers. A Connecticut businesswoman, Vivien Kellems, refused to withhold the taxes of her employees. Eventually, the I.R.S. seized the funds from her bank account.

Ms. Kellems was a cause célèbre in right-wing circles and became an advocate of abolishing the income tax altogether. She wrote a popular book about her run-ins with the I.R.S., “Toil, Taxes and Trouble,” published in 1952.

To this day, many business people object to having to withhold taxes and some have refused to do so, leading to an I.R.S. crackdown.

Liberals have problems with withholding, as well. Many have long wondered why the United States can’t have a truly return-free tax system, as many other countries do. In such a system, withholding is calculated precisely to match one’s tax liability and no return is necessary.

In 1998, Congress mandated that the Treasury Department do a study of return-free taxation, and it was completed in December 2003. A key conclusion of the report was that the United States tax system needed radical simplification for a return-free system to be viable. Taxpayers would also have to accept withholding of taxes on interest and dividends, which they had long opposed, and much more extensive income reporting that likely would be viewed as an intrusion into privacy.

In 1982, Congress enacted a law requiring the withholding of taxes on interest income. It proved so unpopular that it was repealed the following year, before it took effect.

Tax withholding continues to be the object of conservative attack. In 2009, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute wrote a commentary for The Wall Street Journal condemning withholding as a contributor to big government. Withholding disguises the amount of taxes people have to pay, he said. If they had to write a check four times a year, as those with nonwage income must do, they would be more conscious of their tax burden, Mr. Murray asserted.

Jonah Goldberg, also of the American Enterprise Institute , in an article in The Washington Post this year, complained that overwithholding deludes taxpayers into thinking they are getting a tax cut when they get a tax refund.

In a 2006 academic paper, the economist Libor Dusek examined whether tax withholding increased the size of government by looking at the staggered introduction of withholding at the state level. He concluded that 9 percent of the growth of state income taxes from the 1940s to the 1970s was because of withholding.

Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that withholding will ever be abolished. It is far more likely that it will be extended to other forms of income, especially if the idea of a return-free tax system becomes viable as Congress debates tax reform.

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of the coming book, “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”