An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through 
lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the 
world and across the ages Governments have always struggled 
to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they 
fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in 
Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts ― and, in repressing it, ended up 
burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed 
astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax 
on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two 
leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a
 fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes 
in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic ― from the plundering 
described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the 
(misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. 
Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a 
few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind
 such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and 
Slemrod show that yesterday’s tax systems have more in common with ours 
than we may think. Georgian England’s window tax now seems quaint, but 
was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the
 Great’s tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like 
today’s carbon taxes aim to slow global warming. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is
 a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the 
perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation ― and how the 
past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.

Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom Through the Ages! PDF

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