When the Continental Congress wrote the Articles of Confederation, they did not want to enforce taxes on the new states because they did not want to be like Britain. The Articles of Confederation granted the states the right to tax if they wanted to, however it was not a federal law that the federal government tax the states. Given the fact that the states could choose if they wanted to tax or not, it is not surprising that they chose not to tax, causing the United States to go further into debt. This is also one of the main reasons why the Articles of Confederation failed. The debt led them to over print money which led to inflation and also the fact that there was no national currency (each state could make their own money) really helped.