Ben Franklin once famously said that only two things are certain in human existence: death and taxes. Certainly, the man who had helped in the American Revolution, touched off by a 3% tax on tea, would be utterly flabbergasted by the modern US of A, as many citizens end up forking over significant portions of their in come to both state and federal governments, along with myriad other goods and service taxes. Fortunately for him, Franklin died in 1790 and remains dead. He probably wouldn’t be that surprised at the things Americans are taxed on, as the past had its own share of ludicrous taxes. He would probably be surprised that we are willing to pay them, after all the fuss created by not wanting to pay a fat, insensitive government for the privilege of carrying on about our daily lives. Seeing as the sting of Tax Time is fresh in our memories, let us review some of the oddest taxes from history.
In 1535, King Henry VIII, of "I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am" song fame, im posed a tax on beards. Having a rather nice beard himself, he fancied that it would be great if beards were a status symbol of the elites and so imposed this tax to make that happen. The amount paid depended on your social class. Oddly, aristocrats lined up to pay for government approval of their facial plumage, seeking, of course, the ostentatious display of their wealth. He eventually figured out that while clever, it was kind of dumb in the long term and ultimately discarded the tax. However, Queen Elizabeth I reinstated it later, imposing the tax on any beard past two weeks’ growth.
Similarly, in 1698, Russia’s Peter The Great had imposed a beard tax (which also included solo-flying mustaches), but not for status reasons. He just thought Russkies looked better clean shaven. If you paid Peter’s tax, you got a special coin embossed with an image of a nose, mustache and beard, which you were to keep on your hirsute person at all times. The penalty for not presenting it when the authorities asked? They would shave you publicly, right then and there. This tax was only done away with 74 years after its implementation. You can find the beard coins on eBay if you want one. Search "Russian Beard Tax Coin."
Leave it to the English to find and tax pretty much anything in existence. Hats, being in existence, were eventually included in the large volume of Things The English Have Been Taxed On. Introduced in 1784, hatters, who hadn’t quite gotten their contemporary reputation for madness yet, were moved slightly more toward in sanity, when they were mandated to pay a tax of two pounds per year to The Crown for those in London and five pounds per annum outside London. For reference, 2 Pounds Sterling in 1784 was 300 Pounds in 2021, or $412 US Dollars, and 5 pounds was 750 new British Pounds, or $1,027 USD. Hatters who paid the tax were issued unique stamps to attach to the hats they retailed, and those caught without one were subject to arrest and prosecution. A man named John Collins took to fabricating his hat stamps, citing a doctrine of "fuck the Crown." The Crown, however, fucks back and put Collins to death over the matter.
For a year, beginning in 1797, Scot land issued a tax on all "non-working" dogs in the country. The idea was that dogs, which were mere pets, consumed resources that humans could indeed be using. While the tax only lasted a year, many people killed their dogs, citing an inability to pay it. The tax was intended to help the poor, but like most taxes, it was re appropriated for other purposes.
Not a euphemism for booze, but actual urine was taxed in 1st century Rome by Emperors Nero and Vespasian. Urine was collected in large pots outside laundries in Rome and was used to wash clothes to get that tunic or toga its whitest, due to the ammonia content. Interestingly, and disgustingly, they also mixed urine with pumice and used it as a type of toothpaste. While urine is considered a sterile fluid, I doubt most of us would want to put it in our mouths. Unless you’re one of *those* people, in which case, you were born far too late. The name for the tax was "pecunia non olet," in Latin, which translates to "money doesn’t stink."
Not quite a tax, but an exemption from the same. Canada, Ned Flanders to the United States’ Homer Simpson, has an exciting tax break for break fast cereals, if they contain a free toy. Yeah, that’s right. The normal ly stodgy-seeming Canucks are giving tax breaks to foment the child hood joy of reaching your filthy, unwashed hands to the bottom of a cereal box and harvesting a chintzy plastic widget from its bowels. How ever, the tax break is limited to toys that are not "beer, liquor or wine." Now, I’m left wondering if that was a thing *before* this and that Canadian kids had the best breakfast cereals in the world. You seldom see a shot of Crown Royal as "part of this complete breakfast" in the TV commercials, but damn. Everything happens for a reason, and now that they said you can’t, I have to wonder who did.
In what would eventually become the Kerala state of modern India, the Kingdom Of Travancore imposed a tax on women’s breasts, or, rather, those who covered them with gar ments. The tax was collected by revenuers who would go house-to-house to collect the tax from every female who had passed puberty and the ex act amount was levied according to the size of their milkers. This tax, only applied to the lower castes of society, with caste and status being taken very seriously when it was imposed in 1813. The intent was to keep women of those lower castes from cover ing their knockers with cloth, which was a status symbol of the higher castes. A famous protest by a woman named Nangeli saw her cutting off her breasts with a knife, when the taxman came a-knocking in the early 1900s. She died as a result, but prompted social upheaval with re gard to the tax, which was eventual ly repealed in 1923. It is unknown if the tax collector kept the severed tits, but whomever heard of a tax collector giving anything back?
There’s my tax list. I hope that your tax times haven’t been too hard on your pocketbook and that you have some dough to toss around. Stay safe and may you avoid the tax man’s eye.
-Wombstretcha The Magnificent
Wombstretcha The Magnificent is a begrudging taxpayer, semi-professional zoo ape taunter, John Len non denier, writer, and retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (and MeWe, the no-jail Facebook) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
