The Gloomy History of Taxation

Taxation impact our lives either we think about it or not. Some want it to be lower, some even want it gone. But most people want those who have more money than themselves to be taxed harder - while at the same time trying to pay as little taxes as possible themselves.

 

Because all the tasks of the State is financed through taxation, the level of taxation has huge impact on the tasks that the State are involved in. In our day and age their main task is welfare, but in earlier days taxation was mainly used to promote the King's prestige (campaigns, palaces etc)

It would be natural to believe that questions regarding taxation would have been mentioned in books about history. But if you read historical books, they rarely even mention taxation and it's impact on society throughout the ages.

In the book "For Good and Evil: The impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization" By Charles Adams, he gives a whole new perspective on the impact of taxation throughout history. His conclusion is that civilizations grow and prosper when taxes are low, and decay when taxes suffocate productive work.

The Roman Empire

 

One of the reasons Islam spread so fast from the year 632 to 750 AC was because the arabic conquerers didn't demand taxes from those who repented to Islam. Christians on the other hand experiences very high taxes from the Arabs. The areas they conquered was former Roman districts, which had decayed under way too high taxes.

Perhaps the most important reason why Rome had it's heyday was that they managed to replace the traditional trade center of Rhodos with the roman harbour of Delos. They managed this by letting trade vessels use the harbour in Delos without having to pay any fees what so ever. Even if the fee in Rhodos was only 2%, this led to the fact that within a year the business in Rhodos fell with 85%. Everyone started to trade with Delos instead of Rhodos.

Pax Romana - the highlight of the Roman era between 30 BC to 180 AC.

 

The most famous emperor from this period was Augustus. He introduced a simple tax-system for the entire empire. One of the reasons this era was peaceful was because people saw it as a just and fair tax-system. A lot of the taxation was used to build roads, bridges, water supply and public buildings. You would also get your taxes back if your crop failed.

Rome had taken on a lot of tasks, which lead to increased public spending - which ended up unmanagable for the emperors. In the year 210 AC, the silver content in the "dinar" was only half of it's original silver content. 60 years later it was only 5% silver. Soon, Rome collapsed.

Everything Can be Taxed

 

As a norwegian, we know that everything can be taxed and have fees. But it was tsar Peter the great of Russia (1672-1725) who was the most intricate and clever when it came to tax people. In addition to every family having to pay taxes according to number of family members, he also taxed all types of food,clothes, water and public baths, beds, granaries, marriages, pipes, basements and beards. Yes, beards. For some reason he didn't tax property and inherence. Everything that was traded had to be written down on a certain type of paper that only the state sold - at ridicilous prices of course.

There were state monopolies on salt, fish, tobacco and many other merchandise.

Other countries as well have been known to be clever in their taxation. In England 1660 you had to pay tax according to the numbers of fireplaces in your home. Since this arrangement required the taxman to enter peoples homes, it was too much of a hassle. So they decided to to tax the number of windows in the house. Newspapers were taxed by the number of pages , and in the Netherlands houses was taxed by the size of the fasade.

An important point here is how people react to these ridiculous taxes.

A tax on numbers of windows results in people not making windows for their homes, which was the reason many workers in the dawn of industrialism lived in houses without windows. History books mention this, but not the reason why (which was ridiculous taxes)

Freedom means voluntary tax

 

All relations should be voluntary. Force does not belong in your family relation, or towards other people. That's why the state's tasks, which should only be police, law system and military, be financed by voluntary contributions.

All other tasks should be privatized. In the end taxation is theft. You can't get away from that. Even if you live comfortable lives, like most of us do in Scandinavia and Western Europe, it's about the principle. We cannot be truly free if we are forced to give away a proportion of what we earn. Sure, we could do so morally if we did it voluntarily. No one could stop you from doing that. But it is not voluntary, it is by the threath of violence.