Wherever they stand in their annual tussle with the American income-tax system, vexed readers in what is dolefully called tax season may agree with former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill when he declared that “our tax code is an abomination.”
If it’s any consolation, your taxes might have been both abominable and even sillier than they already are. Over the centuries, rulers have imposed levies on beards, livestock flatulence and even urine (valued in ancient Rome for its ammonia). In 1795, Britain imposed an annual tax of one guinea on the right to apply fragrant powders to smelly wigs. Since pigtails were common, those taxpayers became “guinea-pigs.”
Such are the tax-free dividends on offer in “Rebellion, Rascals and Revenue,” an erudite yet good-humored history of taxation with a particular focus on Britain and its tax-allergic offspring, the United States. The authors, economists Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, demonstrate at surprisingly engaging length that, “when it comes to designing and implementing taxes, our ancestors were addressing fundamentally the same problems that we struggle with today.”
