Have you ever seen a colonial American house with fake windows? Or a building with very few windows? You may be told that people did that to avoid the British window tax.
That’s not accurate, but when you learn about the creative ways that governments have tried to tax us over the years, it’s easy to believe that people would alter their home construction to save on their tax bill.
Were Colonial Americans Taxed on Their Windows?
In 1696, the British government introduced a tax on windows as a form of wealth tax. The idea was that if you could afford to have a home with many windows, you should be required to pay more. Houses with seven windows or less were exempt so that the tax would not impact the poor. But it didn’t quite work out that way.
A building was considered a house, even if it was divided up into numerous slum apartments. The landlords who owned these buildings didn’t want to pay the tax, so they boarded up many of the windows. New buildings were built with hardly any windows. So the tax didn’t raise the intended revenue and it forced the poor into dark, airless caves.
This did not happen in the American colonies, however, because that tax was not imposed on colonists. Virginia levied its own window tax temporarily during the Revolutionary War, but it was probably not in effect long enough to affect architecture. The reason we find colonial buildings with fake windows is usually due to a fashion for symmetry. When it wasn’t practical to put in a window because of a chimney or fireplace, the frame and shutters of a non-existent window might be put up to give the appearance that everything was even and tidy.
When you see a small house with no or few windows, the reasons are usually economic. Glass was incredibly expensive and difficult to transport. In many homes, the only way to keep out the cold air was with wooden shutters, which were still drafty. So it didn’t make sense to put it many windows.
Other Historical Weird Taxes
Taxation can be used not only as a means to raise revenue but also as a way to try to influence behavior.
Did They Really Tax Facial Hair?
Tsar Peter (aka Peter the Great) instituted a beard tax in 1698. He wanted the Russian men to follow the “modern” fashions of western Europe. While many leaders exempt themselves from onerous requirements, Peter was willing to be the poster child for this new trend. He held a huge reception and in the middle of the festivities, he pulled out a razor and began to shave the beards off the faces of his guests.
This was not a popular policy, particularly in the Russian Orthodox church. So instead of outlawing beards, Peter put a tax on them. Men with facial hair had to present a token to prove they’d paid the tax.
If he had looked, Peter might have found some legal precedent for his beard tax. In the early 1500s, the French King received papal approval to tax the beards worn by priests to help pay for a costly war. There are also legends of a beard tax levied by Henry VIII in England.
The country of Yemen took the opposite approach in 1936 and taxed men who didn’t have a beard.
When Did Powder Require a License?
We’ve all seen pictures of aristocrats from the 1700s with elaborate white hair piled on their heads. The white color was achieved with a starchy powder, but the powder first used on hair in the 1500s was brown and used to disguise a monarch’s graying tresses. Powder remained popular as a hair styling agent until about 1795. That was the year Great Britain required the purchase of an annual license for the privilege of putting powder in either your wig or your natural hair.
The tax was not repealed until 1869, but it didn’t raise much money because the French Revolution changed the fashion away from elaborate white wigs to more natural looks. After the 1790s, the only people wearing powder were judges and liveried servants.
What Strange Things Did the Romans Tax?
No blog on government oddities would be complete without a mention of the Romans. Emperor Vespasian taxed urine. This was not as difficult to collect as you might imagine. The Romans did not station tax collectors in urinals. Instead, they imposed the tax on the entrepreneurs who collected the urine for use in leather tanning and textile production.
While this tax was aimed at raising revenue, another Roman tax—the bachelor tax—was designed to further social policies. Worried that birth rates were falling in Rome, Augustus decided to encourage marriage by penalizing people who remained single. The law prohibited the unmarried from receiving inheritances. Widows or divorced women had to remarry within a specific time or face a fine, and they would lose half their inheritance if they had no children.
Surprising Modern Taxes
The tax codes of most nations and local governments are so voluminous that there are probably all sorts of weird taxes hiding in plain sight. I’m too lazy to dig real deep, but here are a few unexpected revenue-raisers:
- Watching TV – In the UK, you must buy an annual license to be allowed to watch (or record) live TV in your own home. TV inspectors can come around and fine you £1,000 if they catch you watching without a license.
- Cow flatulence – Starting in 2030, Denmark will use respiration chambers, sulfur hexafluoride tracers, and satellites to measure and tax methane emissions from cattle.
- Athletic performance – Professional athletes who travel are required to pay “jock taxes” in the states and towns where they play as visitors.
- Rain tax – in Maryland, many counties collect tax based on the impervious surfaces on your property that prevent rainwater from soaking into the ground. The tax is calculated according to satellite imagery of your property.
- Fruit from a vending machine – California charges a partial tax on fresh fruit sold in vending machines while fruit sold at the grocery store is exempt from sales tax.
- Sliced bagels – In New York, uncut bagels are exempt from taxation as groceries, but if someone alters a bagel by cutting it, toasting it, or adding a spread, it transforms into prepared food subject to state and local sales tax.
What’s Lurking in the Rest of the Iceberg?
Since governements have been creatively using taxes to control behavior and generate income for thousands of years, the examples above are clearly just the tip of the iceberg. The larger and more dangerous taxes are not as obvious because they are buried in our payroll taxes, income taxes, and property taxes and incorporated into the cost of goods we buy. Like the passengers on the Titanic, we will suffer because of the factors we don’t see.
It’s fun to think about “weird” taxes, but it is scary to realize how many politicians are trying to control our behavior through fiscal policies that fit their own personal agenda.
Sorry, I meant this to be funny, but I’m no longer laughing.
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Some of the information in the blog came from:
Augustus and Marriage Legislation (California State University)
UK Parliament
UK Government
Smithsonian Magazine