Taxes
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50 free Taxes trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Taxes are older than coinage. Rulers have taken a share of harvests, work and trade for thousands of years, and people have been arguing about it, dodging it and now and then rioting over it for just as long. That history is full of odd levies, clever loopholes and famous names who fell foul of the collector. This quiz mixes the practical with the peculiar. Some questions cover how the American system works: the forms, the filing deadline and the terms every student meets in a civics or personal finance class. Others travel through tax history, from the ancient world and medieval England to the American Revolution, and on into music, film and board games. It suits students revising the basics, teachers and trivia hosts planning a round for filing season, and anyone who wants proof that the subject is more fun than filling in a return. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which English tax of 1696 led some homeowners to brick up openings in their walls?
Window tax
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.
Q 02Which Russian ruler taxed beards in 1698, making men who paid carry a metal token as proof?
Peter the Great
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 Catherine the Great finally repealed the tax in 1772.
Q 03Which Chicago gangster was finally jailed in 1931 for tax evasion rather than bootlegging or murder?
Al Capone
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.
Q 04In legend, which noblewoman rode naked through Coventry to make her husband lift his heavy taxes?
Lady Godiva
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.
Q 05Which Beatle wrote the 1966 song Taxman in protest at a 95 per cent supertax on top earners in Britain?
Harrison
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.
Q 06Which 1773 protest saw colonists disguised as American Indians destroy a taxed East India Company cargo?
Boston Tea Party
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.
Q 07Which Founding Father wrote in a 1789 letter that nothing is certain except death and taxes?
Benjamin Franklin
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.
Q 08In the classic US edition of Monopoly, which space sits between Park Place and Boardwalk?
Luxury Tax
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.
Q 09Which 1970s pop group wore wild stage costumes partly because clothes unfit for daily wear were tax deductible?
ABBA
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.
Q 10Which artefact, found by a French army officer in Egypt in 1799, records a priestly decree that cut taxes?
Rosetta Stone
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.
Q 11On which date are US federal income tax returns normally due, a deadline moved from March 15 in 1955?
April 15
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.
Q 12Which change to the US Constitution, ratified in 1913, gave Congress clear power to levy an income tax?
16th Amendment
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.
Q 13Which form number have Americans used for their annual federal income tax return since 1913?
1040
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.
Q 21What term describes a tax, like the US federal income tax, whose rate rises as the amount taxed rises?
Progressive
Progressive rates climb from low to high, so a taxpayer's average rate ends up below the rate paid on the last dollar earned.
Q 22What name is given to a tax on imported goods, such as those raised by the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930?
Tariff
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.
Q 23Which nickname is given to sumptuary taxes on alcohol, tobacco and gambling, levied partly to discourage them?
Sin tax
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.
Q 14The IRS is a bureau of which US cabinet department, first led by Alexander Hamilton?
Treasury
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.
Q 15Which US president signed the first federal income tax into law in 1861 to help pay for a war?
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Q 16FICA payroll deductions fund Medicare and which other federal program, created under the New Deal in 1935?
Social Security
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.
Q 17Which retirement plan, pioneered by consultant Ted Benna, is named after a subsection added to the tax code in 1978?
401(k)
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.
Q 18Which Pacific Northwest state joins Alaska, Delaware, Montana and New Hampshire in charging no statewide sales tax?
Oregon
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.
Q 19Under the US Constitution, all bills for raising revenue, such as tax bills, must begin in which body?
The House
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.
Q 20Which form must US employers send each worker by January 31, showing the past year's wages and tax withheld?
W-2
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.
Q 24Which consumption tax, devised by French official Maurice Lauré in the 1950s, is collected at each stage of production?
Value-added tax
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.
Q 25Which country introduced a tax on foods high in saturated fat in 2011, then scrapped it about a year later?
Denmark
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.
Q 26Which European microstate stopped collecting income tax from residents in 1869, once its casino was making enough money?
Monaco
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.
Q 27Margaret Thatcher's Community Charge, which sparked a 1990 riot in Trafalgar Square, was better known by which name?
Poll tax
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.
Q 28Mahatma Gandhi led a 24-day march to the sea at Dandi in 1930 to defy the British tax on which commodity?
Salt
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.
Q 29Which of the twelve apostles is described in the Gospels as a tax collector before Jesus called him?
Matthew
Matthew was sitting at his customs post in Capernaum when the call came. He is now the patron saint of accountants and bankers.
Q 30Which 1765 British law taxed newspapers, legal documents and even dice in the American colonies?
Stamp Act
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.