A Short Depressing History of Taxes

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The U.S. tax code is 4 million words long. Shakespeare’s entire canon is just 900,000.

Thankfully most Americans use the ‘1040’ form, which is one of the simplest tax forms, at just 200 pages long!

Taxes are so confusing that when ‘Money Magazine’ asked 50 tax professionals to completing the same tax return for the same single family, they came up with 50 different answers! [1]

Seriously, is there anything worse than taxes?

Well, yes. More taxes!

Maybe we could be like ye olde English folk who were taxed on windows, or like the Russians who were taxed on beards. Maybe we could be like the Ancient Egyptians and get paid in beer – and taxed in beer! [2]

It depends on where you stand.

Are you convinced taxes are theft on successful people? You’d argue burdensome and convoluted tax laws fund wars and line the pockets of corrupt politicians.

But maybe you’re a realist because countries can’t be funded on bake sales. How else will we fund train lines, paved roads, and hospitals?

Normalizing taxation also normalised tax rebates. That’s good news for a slave owner, but still bad news for a slave…

Conducting censuses was tricky business though.

To ease the pain, taxes were based on entire communities rather than on individual homes. Provincial governments and local magistrates oversaw taxation, but the physical collection was auctioned off.

The Publicani were tax farmers, who would outbid each other for the pleasure of being the most hated person on the planet: the taxman.

If their bid won, then they paid the state the advance of the collection. These were effectively loans where Rome was expected to pay back any interest to the Publicani.

Tax collectors got to keep the interest plus anything in excess of their bid. However, they had to do the hard work of converting everything into coinage, and be prepared to make a loss if they weren’t able to recoup their bid. [6]

To lower that risk, some Roman tax collectors colluded with local politicians to buy up large quantities of grain at low rates, which they’d hold in reserve until they could mark up the value during a food shortage.

But give it a few hundred years and citizens would push back against the tax man, which is why the policies for paying your dues got a whole lot stranger.

It’s time to count the ways tax has changed the world to understand why “The History of Tax is Weird”.

Sources -
1. https://www.shoeboxed.com/blog/10-fun...

2.https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-bee... 3.

chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.iaao.org/uploads/a_brief_...

4. https://kpbl.pl/en/the-history-oftaxa...
ctio n%20of%20pyramids%20and%20temples.

5. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/42...

6. https://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-ta...

7. https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/...

8. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/l...
conquest/

9. https://www.britannica.com/topic/tallage

10. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi...

11. https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/un...

12. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901904

13. https://www.history.org.uk/secondary/...

14. https://www.britannica.com/event/Peas...

15. https://www.history.com/topics/renais...

16. https://www.parliament.uk/about/livin...

17. https://daily.jstor.org/peter-the-gre...

18. https://www.fruitnet.com/fresh-produc...
once-a-symbol-of-wealth/180527.article

19. https://www.history.com/topics/americ... 20.
https://www.britannica.com/story/did-...
them-eat-cake

21. https://www.worldhistory.org/Storming...

22. https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/educ...
taxes/

23. https://www.parliament.uk/about/livin...
lives/taxation/overview/incometaxbolished/