The Tax Act of 1898 was passed to finance the Spanish-American War.
The new documentary taxes were similiar to those enacted to pay for the Civil War in the 1860s.
For example, every bank check required a 2c stamp.
There was not enough time to print the necessary tax stamps before the taxes went into effect,
so provisional overprints were applied to postage stamps. These overprints are listed as Scott #R153-R160.
Cancellations on revenues are typically manuscript cancels (or rubberstamps) with the date and initials of a company.
Therefore these two used stamps have
both an overprint and a cancel.
Here is an example of a 2c IR overprint with a manuscript cancel,
properly used in 1898 to pay the tax on a bank check (from a recent listing on
ebay).
Posted 10/22/2008 9:38 pm
they are overprints, but what does the IR stand for. Certainly not Internal Revenue . . . . ?
