In the days of ancient Rome, it was tradition for the upper class to liberate their slaves after a set number of years. The Roman government, however, looked at this as an opportunity to generate revenue, and they taxed the newly freed slave on his freedom.
In 1696, the English government under William III (William of Orange “King Billy”) passed a new law requiring subjects to pay a tax based on the number of windows in their homes. It was abolished 156 years later. Not willing to pay such a scandalous tax on something as basic as sunlight, many English/Welsh/Scottish simply reduced the number of windows in their homes. This obviously led to less light and ventilation and a rise in associated health problems. To get around the dark houses people were using more candles, so to save on candle costs they started to make their own, but..
England introduced a tax on candles in 1789. Making your own candles was outlawed unless you first obtained a licence and paid tax on your own homemade candles. Nice.
Television Tax – In the UK if you own a television in your home, you must pay an annual fee, formally called a television licence (not a tax but a licence), for each television you own. The funds are used to finance programming on BBC, whether you watch those channels or not. Colour TV’s are taxed at a 145.50 pounds annually, whereas black and white TV sets are taxed at 49 pounds per year.
Blind people still have to pay the tax, but at a reduced rate of 50%. Very generous. And of course, failure to pay this fee subjects the violator to criminal penalties. There were 155,000 convictions and fines in 2012 alone. And 51 people actually went to prison that year for failure to pay the TV tax apparently.
Now to new ‘Temporary Taxes’ or ‘Levies’ as the Australian politicians like to call them. We have recently had the temporary ‘flood levy’ and now there is the new temporary ‘budget repair levy’ but consider this bit of history..
The Johnstown Flood Tax.
In 1936, the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania in the US was devastated by flood, and in its efforts to do something, the state assembly imposed an emergency, ‘temporary’ tax of 10% on all alcohol sold in the state. This ‘temporary’ tax remained in place for nearly 30 years, at which point it was raised to 15% in 1963, and again to 18% in 1968.
The ‘temporary’ tax still exists today, proving once again that there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government measure.
