Chances are you’ve never heard of Beardsley Ruml. But if you pay income taxes, he has exerted a significant influence on your life. He's the man who conceived what he called the "pay-as-you-go" method, now better known as estimated tax payments. In the process, he transformed the American way of income taxes. Before 1940, only about 7 percent of Americans even paid income taxes. World War II changed that drastically. The unprecedented costs of the war meant two things to American leaders: People would have to pay much higher taxes and, more important, far more people would have to pay them. A new tax bill would also ... (full story)