50 Fun Facts About Taxes

Which English tax of 1696 led some homeowners to brick up openings in their walls?

Window tax charged a house by the number of windows it had, so some owners simply blocked a few up. The bricked-in outlines can be seen on buildings of the period, and the tax lasted until 1851.

Which Russian ruler taxed beards in 1698, making men who paid carry a metal token as proof?

Peter the Great wanted Russian men to look like clean-shaven Western Europeans, so keeping a beard came at a price. Catherine the Great finally repealed the tax in 1772.

Which Chicago gangster was finally jailed in 1931 for tax evasion rather than bootlegging or murder?

Al Capone was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison after being charged with 22 counts of tax evasion. He served part of the term on the newly opened Alcatraz.

In legend, which noblewoman rode naked through Coventry to make her husband lift his heavy taxes?

Lady Godiva's ride is first recorded in the 13th century, more than a century after she died, and historians doubt it happened. Later versions added Peeping Tom, the one man who looked.

Which Beatle wrote the 1966 song Taxman in protest at a 95 per cent supertax on top earners in Britain?

George Harrison wrote it after finding out how little of the Beatles' income was left once Harold Wilson's Labour government had taken its share. It opens the album Revolver.

Which 1773 protest saw colonists disguised as American Indians destroy a taxed East India Company cargo?

The Boston Tea Party sent more than 300 chests into the harbour, because colonists refused a duty set by a Parliament in which they had no vote. Britain hit back by closing the port.

Which Founding Father wrote in a 1789 letter that nothing is certain except death and taxes?

Benjamin Franklin made the remark to the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, but he did not coin it. A version of the line appears in an English play of 1716.

In the classic US edition of Monopoly, which space sits between Park Place and Boardwalk?

Luxury Tax is the last hazard before GO, lying between the two most expensive streets on the board. Its charge rose from $75 to $100 when the US edition was redesigned in 2008.

Which 1970s pop group wore wild stage costumes partly because clothes unfit for daily wear were tax deductible?

ABBA could deduct the cost of stage clothes under Swedish law only if they could not be worn anywhere else, so the wilder the outfit, the better.

Which artefact, found by a French army officer in Egypt in 1799, records a priestly decree that cut taxes?

The Rosetta Stone, later the key to reading hieroglyphs, carries a decree of 196 BC honouring King Ptolemy V for cutting some taxes and abolishing others. The priests got a break of their own.

On which date are US federal income tax returns normally due, a deadline moved from March 15 in 1955?

April 15 became Tax Day in 1955, giving filers a month longer than before. When the modern income tax began in 1913, the deadline was set at March 1.

Which change to the US Constitution, ratified in 1913, gave Congress clear power to levy an income tax?

The 16th Amendment overturned an 1895 Supreme Court ruling that had struck down an earlier income tax. Congress passed a new one within months of ratification.

Which form number have Americans used for their annual federal income tax return since 1913?

Form 1040 has no hidden meaning: it was simply the next number in the government's sequence of forms when the modern income tax arrived.

The IRS is a bureau of which US cabinet department, first led by Alexander Hamilton?

Treasury has housed the nation's tax collectors since an office of internal revenue was set up in 1862. The name Internal Revenue Service dates only from 1953.

Which US president signed the first federal income tax into law in 1861 to help pay for a war?

Abraham Lincoln approved a flat 3% tax on incomes above $800 to fund the Union's side of the Civil War. A broader act with rising rates replaced it the following year.

FICA payroll deductions fund Medicare and which other federal program, created under the New Deal in 1935?

Social Security takes the larger slice of FICA, and the employer has to match what comes out of each pay packet. The letters stand for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.

Which retirement plan, pioneered by consultant Ted Benna, is named after a subsection added to the tax code in 1978?

The 401(k) grew out of Benna's attempt to cut the tax on a bonus scheme for bank executives, at a time when the top rate was 70%. He set up one of the first plans at his own firm.

Which Pacific Northwest state joins Alaska, Delaware, Montana and New Hampshire in charging no statewide sales tax?

Oregon voters have turned down a sales tax every time one has been put to them, nine times in all. The state leans on income tax instead.

Under the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, such as tax bills, must begin in which body?

The House goes first because the framers borrowed Britain's rule that money bills begin in the Commons, the chamber closest to the voters. Senators may amend them afterwards.

Which form must US employers send each worker by January 31, showing the past year's wages and tax withheld?

Form W-2 is officially the Wage and Tax Statement. Employers must also file a copy with the government, so a worker's return can be checked against it.

What term describes a tax, like the US federal income tax, whose rate rises as the amount taxed rises?

Progressive rates climb from low to high, so a taxpayer's average rate ends up below the rate paid on the last dollar earned.

What name is given to a tax on imported goods, such as those raised by the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930?

Tariff rises on more than 20,000 imports under Smoot-Hawley led America's trading partners to hit back with duties of their own, and exports slumped.

Which nickname is given to sumptuary taxes on alcohol, tobacco and gambling, levied partly to discourage them?

Sin tax raises the price of a habit in the hope that people will cut back. The same idea has been stretched to cover sugar, soft drinks and fast food.

Which consumption tax, devised by French official Maurice Lauré in the 1950s, is collected at each stage of production?

Value-added tax has spread from France to most of the world and supplies about a fifth of all tax revenue. The United States is the one OECD member without it.

Which country introduced a tax on foods high in saturated fat in 2011, then scrapped it about a year later?

Denmark taxed butter, cheese, meat and pizza, but dropped the charge after Danes took to shopping across the border and producers called it a bureaucratic nightmare.

Which European microstate stopped collecting income tax from residents in 1869, once its casino was making enough money?

Monaco's ruling Grimaldi family could afford the gesture thanks to the success of the Monte Carlo Casino. French citizens living there are the exception and do pay.

Margaret Thatcher's Community Charge, which sparked a 1990 riot in Trafalgar Square, was better known by which name?

Poll tax meant every adult in an area paid the same fixed sum, whatever they earned. Thatcher faced a leadership challenge that November, and the charge was gone by 1993.

Mahatma Gandhi led a 24-day march to the sea at Dandi in 1930 to defy the British tax on which commodity?

Salt was a British monopoly in India, so when Gandhi made his own from seawater after walking 240 miles, he was breaking the law in full public view.

Which of the twelve apostles is described in the Gospels as a tax collector before Jesus called him?

Matthew was sitting at his customs post in Capernaum when the call came. He is now the patron saint of accountants and bankers.

Which 1765 British law taxed newspapers, legal documents and even dice in the American colonies?

The Stamp Act required printed material to carry an embossed revenue mark, paid for in British coin. It caused such uproar that Parliament repealed it the following year.

Which 1790s tax protest in western Pennsylvania did George Washington suppress by riding out with 13,000 militiamen?

The Whiskey Rebellion was aimed at a 1791 duty on distilled spirits, meant to pay off debts from the Revolutionary War. Jefferson's party repealed the tax in 1802.

Which great survey of England, ordered by William the Conqueror, recorded who held what land and what dues they owed?

Domesday Book grew out of lists drawn up for the national land tax. Its name likens it to the Last Judgment, because nothing written in it could be appealed.

Which Roman emperor defended his tax on urine from public toilets by telling his son Titus that money does not smell?

Vespasian is said to have held a gold coin under the nose of his son, who found the tax disgusting. Public urinals in France and Italy were later named after him.

Which French chemist, who named oxygen, was guillotined in 1794 after years as a partner in a hated tax-collecting firm?

Antoine Lavoisier had bought a share in the Ferme générale, which paid the crown up front for the right to collect its taxes. He was officially cleared a year and a half after his death.

Which prime minister brought in Britain's first income tax in 1798 to pay for war with France?

Pitt the Younger hoped to raise £10 million for weapons but collected just over £6 million in the first year. The tax was scrapped after Waterloo and returned for good in 1842.

The 1834 fire that destroyed Britain's Houses of Parliament began with officials burning which old tax records?

Tally sticks were notched pieces of wood, used as receipts until 1826. Stuffed carelessly into two furnaces beneath the Lords' chamber, they set the chimney flues alight.

Which Anglo-Saxon tax, first raised to buy off seaborne raiders, later became a permanent land tax in England?

Danegeld means the Danes' payment, and it outlived the raids. After the conquest of 1016 it was kept on as a land tax to pay for the realm's defence.

On which playing card did English makers show that tax had been paid on a deck, a duty that lasted until 1960?

The ace of spades was hand-marked from 1712, and from 1765 the tax office printed the card itself, royal coat of arms included. Its ornate look in modern packs is a relic of that rule.

Which British finance office is named after the chessboard-like cloth on which medieval clerks counted taxes?

Exchequer comes from the Old French for chessboard. Counters were moved across the squares of the cloth so that what was owed and what had been paid could be worked out in plain sight.

Which pre-Columbian empire collected much of its tax as labour, under a system of mandatory service called mit'a?

The Inca used the drafted labour to build their road network, bridges, farm terraces and forts. Spanish rulers later kept the system going for their own ends.

Which action star served 28 months in federal prison after a 2008 conviction for wilfully failing to file tax returns?

Wesley Snipes was acquitted of the felony fraud and conspiracy counts but found guilty of three misdemeanours for not filing. He had declared himself a non-resident alien for tax purposes.

Which country singer released a 1992 album of solo recordings to help pay off a $16 million debt to the IRS?

Willie Nelson recorded it with just his guitar after the IRS seized most of his assets in 1990. The album raised $3.6 million towards the bill.

Which British band moved to France in 1971 as tax exiles and recorded much of Exile on Main St. there?

The Rolling Stones recorded at Nellcôte, a rented villa, in loose sessions that ran for hours into the night with whoever turned up that day.

Which actress won an Oscar for playing tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre in Everything Everywhere All at Once?

Jamie Lee Curtis won Best Supporting Actress as the IRS agent auditing a struggling laundromat owner. It was one of seven Oscars the film took home.

Which writer spent a night in jail in 1846 for refusing to pay a tax, then wrote the essay Civil Disobedience?

Henry David Thoreau withheld the money in protest at slavery and the Mexican-American War. He was freed the next day when someone, probably his aunt, paid up against his wishes.

Which Nobel-winning economist helped invent US payroll tax withholding as a wartime official in the 1940s?

Milton Friedman, later the great champion of small government, helped design the system so that Washington could fund the war. He came to wish it could be abolished.

Which chief justice wrote in an 1819 ruling that the power to tax involves the power to destroy?

John Marshall was striking down Maryland's attempt to tax a federal bank. Because federal law is supreme, he held, a state has no power to interfere with it in that way.

Which British snack escaped a tax on chocolate biscuits when a 1991 tribunal ruled it was something else?

Jaffa Cakes won after McVitie's argued that cakes go hard when stale while biscuits go soft. The firm even baked a 12-inch one to show that size was beside the point.

Which Supreme Court justice's remark that taxes pay for civilized society is carved above the door of IRS headquarters?

Oliver Wendell Holmes practised what he preached. In his will he left the bulk of his fortune to the United States government.

Which US vice president resigned in 1973 after pleading no contest to a charge of tax evasion?

Spiro Agnew was only the second vice president to resign, after John C. Calhoun in 1832. Nixon replaced him with Gerald Ford, who was president within a year.