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July 13, 2009 There and Back

Levy levity | Think Maine's new taxes are bad? The Brits had it worse

By John Mcdonald

“If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,

If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.

If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat,

If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.”

—“Taxman” by The Beatles

I think it was Ben Franklin who said: “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” The past few months here in Maine folks have been talking more about taxes than death. And it was the fiscally conservative Beatles who sang in “Taxman” that their advice to those who die was to declare the pennies on their eyes.

But don’t worry; I have no intention of getting into the issues facing Maine taxpayers as a result of recently enacted “tax reform” legislation. I won’t even go on record and say whether I’m in favor of “death” and “taxes” — you’ll have to tune into my weekend radio show on WGAN to get that information. But I’d like to say a few things about some of the taxes that plagued the human race in earlier times. As new and ingenious taxes appear to be coming toward us from all directions, this is my humble attempt at showing you that as bad as we have it now, things could be worse. In fact, things were as bad or a tad worse in times past.

They say Peter the Great of Russia went The Beatles a few taxes better by taxing beards, hats,boots, beehives, basements, chimneys, food, marriage and burial. I’m not trying to give Maine legislators any ideas, but I just wanted to let you know how all-inclusive the urge to tax can be.

I was reading a small book titled “Schott’s Original Miscellany” by another less famous Ben – Ben Schott – whose book was published by Bloomsbury. That Ben writes that the British Parliament once levied a tax on men’s hats and the dreaded hat tax remained in effect throughout the United Kingdom for over 20 years. For some reason, Parliament ignored women’s hats and decreed that only men’s hats be taxed.

Imagine yourself in the average rural diner some morning in Maine. In your mind’s eye, notice that most every man in the place is wearing some kind of head cover or cap, probably of the Red Sox variety. Now try to imagine all the revenue that could be collected for our depleted state coffers if every one of those hats was taxed. We can assume their owners all paid sales taxes on these hats, but what about another tax, a tax on a hat just for being a hat, over and above any “sale” that might be involved.

In the jolly old London of the late 1700s, “purveyors of hats” were required to buy a hat seller’s license and display a sign that read: “Dealer in hats by retail.” To enforce its hat tax, Parliament ordered the printing of duty stamps that each hat seller had to buy and paste inside every man’s hat they sold. It says a lot about a Brit and his hat that rather than avoid the tax by simply not wearing a hat, he would, at the risk of execution, “procure” forged hat-duty stamps.

All this may sound quaint and silly to us now, but Parliament in those days was very serious about such taxes and was pretty tough on anyone who tried to avoid them. In its wisdom, it decreed that evasion of the hat tax — by either hat seller or hat wearer — was punishable by a stiff fine. Just to show it meant business, Parliament further decreed that forgery of hat-duty stamps was punishable by death! Not even our IRS goes that far — yet. I could be wrong, but I don’t know that we’ve ever executed tax cheats here in Maine.

Long before the hat tax got going, parliament passed the window tax, which was first levied in 1697. Believe it or not, that law required that every house in the kingdom be taxed at least two shillings for its windows. Properties with up to 20 windows paid four shillings, and if you were lucky enough to have more than 20 drafty windows in your dwelling, you paid as much as eight shillings.

Like any tax, these levies steadily increased year after year and eventually poor people began “stopping up” their windows just to avoid the ever-increasing tax. Believing that the government’s tax-collecting arm should be its strongest appendage, “window inspectors” were hired to go from house to house to make sure no resident received sunlight through an untaxed window.

I don’t know if any of this makes you feel better or worse about our present situation, but I feel better after telling you about it.

John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com.

 

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