It's my strongly-held belief that taxes are a lot more interesting than people give them credit for; that's one of the reasons [I wrote about them back in October](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/taxes/) %% ( [[2021-10-18 Taxes (DRAFT)]] ) %%. They seem pretty boring because we tend to focus on the normal ones like income taxes and trade tariffs... and because school conditioned most of us to find word problems tiresome. Back when I was in law school, I took a tax law class. Somehow, that was the first time I was ever exposed to the idea that taxes served a policy purpose beyond “getting money for the government to use.” Many taxes codes are designed to incentivize (or punish) particular behaviors; the latter are generally known as "sin taxes." For example, adult nightclubs, strip clubs, gambling, alcohol, gasoline and candies are lucrative for modern governments; they attract buyers and generate revenue, but generally people don't fuss too much about the government trying to make them more expensive and thus, harder to acquire. Sometimes this backfires. In 1696, the English had to pay taxes based on the number of windows in their homes. It was probably meant as a sort of wealth tax, but people just bricked up their windows in their house. Ironically, bricks were also taxed, but eventually the window tax [took such a toll on public health that it was repealed after about 150 years](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nation-world/nine-weird-taxes-from-around-the-world/window-tax/slideshow/56516226.cms). After years of builders increasing brick size to avoid the brick tax, it was eliminated in 1850. This reminded me of the Roman sumptuary laws, which I [also wrote about in October](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/sumptuary-laws/) %% ( [[2021-10-11 Sumptuary Laws (DRAFT)]] ) %% — they were eliminated after Roman women took to the streets in protest. Sure enough, at least one world leader used taxes to enforce appearance ideals: Peter the Great of Russia. He liked the idea of Russia having clean-shaven men like western Europe. At first, he tried [outright banning beards](https://theculturetrip.com/europe/russia/articles/the-controversial-history-of-russian-beards/), but that went over pretty poorly; he had to settle for a beard tax, which persisted for nearly 50 years past his death. Beards are still pretty controversial in Russia, from what I understand, at least in part because of this cultural tension. Speaking of tension, taxes were sometimes used as a way for feudal kings to balance two conflicting needs: money and might. King Henry I, for example, gave his vassals a choice between fighting or paying scutage (does it really matter if we call it a tax or a fine?) to avoid going off to war. This was particularly important for ecclesiastical tenants (i.e. churches), who had trouble raising a full quota of knights for the army. Scutage was generally pretty affordable, so a lot of knights chose to pay instead of fight... until King John (of _Robin Hood_ fame) levied them so often his vassals threatened civil war. Most Americans grew up hearing about the importance of "no taxation without representation," but tax rates are responsible for more than just the Declaration of Independence; I doubt the Magna Carta would have existed if it weren't for scutages.