Transcript
What do beards, chickens, and home windows have in widespread? Surprisingly, taxes.
Taxes are designed to generate income for the federal government. However taxes additionally affect habits—generally on objective, and generally in very surprising methods.
In 1698, Tsar of Russia Peter the Nice needed to Westernize the nation and alter the “face” of Russia. Actually.
His plan included compelling males to ditch their facial hair by a “beard tax.” Males might pay to maintain their beards, or shave and save.
The beard tax was supposed to vary habits, however different taxes can produce all types of unintended penalties.
In 18th– and 19th-century England, the federal government imposed a property tax on the variety of home windows in a home. In response, constructing house owners bricked over their home windows.
When Paris tried an analogous property tax levied on the variety of flooring beneath a house’s roofline, architects created the Mansard roof to make extra dwelling area out of fewer flooring.
Because of this design, owners might have shelter from the climate and undesirable taxes. After which there’s the hen tax.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, the US exported a LOT of hen to Europe. European farmers received their feathers ruffled, so their governments slapped tariffs on all poultry from throughout the pond.
President LBJ referred to as “fowl” play and retaliated with tariffs on imported gentle vans and cargo vans from Europe. To get across the tax, some US corporations that manufactured overseas disassembled complete vans, shipped them to the US, and reassembled them.
Taxes all the time have penalties. Typically intentional, generally not, and sometimes simply plain bizarre.