linguistic:paraphrasing
Historical background

Federal excise taxes have a storied background in the United States. Responding to an urgent need for revenue following the American Revolutionary War, after the ninth state ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788 the newly elected First United States Congress passed, and President George Washington, signed the Tariff Act of July 4, 1789, which authorized the collection of tariff duties (customs) on imported goods. Tariffs and excise taxes were authorized by the United States Constitution and recommended by the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in 1789, to tax foreign imports. Hamilton thought it was important to start the U.S. federal government out on a sound financial basis with good credit and a regular, easily collected source of revenue. Customs duties (tariffs) on imported goods, as set by tariff rates, were the source of about 80–95% of all federal revenue up to 1860. Having just fought a war over taxation (among other things), the U.S. Congress wanted a reliable source of income that was relatively unobtrusive, brought in enough money to pay off the debt and pay for the relatively low-cost federal government (at the time) and be relatively easy to collect. Tariffs met all these criteria.