Tax Facts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nero

In ancient Rome, urine was used in the tanning of leather and also by the laundresses who kept all those senatorial togas sparkling white (urine, of course, contains ammonia, a bleaching agent). The tanners and the laundresses collected the urine from public toilets (yes, they had such facilities in the Rome of those days) and used it to ply their trades.

It was Nero who hit on the idea of taxing the urine collectors as a means of swelling the public coffers. The tax was later repealed (I guess the citizens raised a bit of a stink about it), but it was reinstated by Nero's successor, Emperor Vespasian. When Vespasian's son Titus wrinkled his nose and expressed his disgust about taxing urine, dear old dad held up a gold coin and said, "Non olet!" (translation: "This doesn't stink!)

Oddly enough, even though it was Nero who invented the tax, it is Vespasian's name that is associated with it. In France, public urinals are known as vespasiennes, in Italy, they are vespasiani, and in Rumania, the gentlemen head for the vespasiene when nature calls.

Answer: Maine

Maine has been taxing blueberries since 1882, and any Maine resident who grows, sells, handles, processes or buys blueberries pays a tax of three-quarters of a cent on every pound of blueberries grown, sold, handled, processed or bought! Since Maine produces 25% of all the blueberries in the US, the state make a pretty penny at tax time! Think about that the next time you enjoy a slice of blueberry pie.

Answer: Morton's Fork

Morton was as big a clutchfist as his royal master and they probably rubbed their hands in glee when Morton came up with his infamous tax. It was called Morton's Fork by the poor unfortunates who had to pay it because it held the taxpayer in a cleft stick - a sort of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't kind of tax.

It worked like this: Morton's very efficient tax collectors would visit a well-heeled subject of the king and demand payment based on the fact that said subject was spending rather lavishly which, they said, would indicate that he (sometimes she, but more rarely) certainly could spare a fat purse for the royal exchequer.

Conversely, subjects known to be plump in the pocket who lived frugally would be approached with a different demand: he (or she) was known to have considerable wealth but didn't seem to be wasting any of it, so doubtless he/she could afford to contribute generously to the king's coffers. Neat!

Answer: Poll tax

While there are certainly tax implications in a divorce settlement, there is no actual tax on divorce itself in the UK, Brits already pay taxes on every pint they consume at the local, and since schools have outlawed conkers as not being PC, it wouldn't be worth HM government's while to tax the horse chestnut. No, it was Margaret Thatcher's infamous poll tax that caused not only the riot but also her own political demise! She resigned office eight months later and her successor John Major repealed the poll tax. Surveys taken in Britain during the poll tax debacle indicated that only 2% of the population were in favour of the tax.

Answer: Danes

The Danish income tax rate is 38-59% of total income. Ouch! Swedes pay 0-57%, followed by the Norwegians (28-49%), the Dutch (0-52%), Austrians (21-50%), Belgians (15-50%), Australians (17-45%), Germans (15-45%), Italians (23-43%), Spaniards (24-43%), the French (5-40%), and the Brits (0-40%). If you're an American or a Canadian, you should feel better about income tax rates of 10-35% and 15-29% respectively!

NB: Please note, the tax rates given here are tax rates for the year 2009.

Answer: Monaco

The Monagesques* pay no income tax at all - zip, zilch, nada! The world's second smallest country (actually, it's a city state), Monaco has become something of a tax haven for the international high roller set. In Bulgaria, you'll pay a flat income tax rate of 10%, regardless of how much you make, and Russia imposes a 13% flat tax, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic will take 15%, while Rumania assesses a 16% flat income tax rate and Iceland does too, for 23% of your income.
*I've been waiting for an opportunity to use Monagesque in a quiz and it finally came - tax-free!

Answer: A tax on beards

Tsar Peter I (aka Peter the Great) became tsar at age 10 in 1682 and spent the next 43 years (until his death in 1725) dragging feudal Russia into the modern world. He re-organized Russian society from top to bottom, established a powerful navy, reformed the church, built neo-classic public buildings and created a new capital - St. Petersburg, a city he built from scratch! In order to finance all his improvements he came up with some mighty original taxes.

He decreed that a specific type of paper should be used for contracts - and taxed it! He also taxed private bathhouses and oak coffins, along with liquor, salt and imported goods.

In 1705, in an effort to tidy up the physical appearance of Russia's nobles (no doubt to give the court an elegant, European-style appearance), Peter decreed that Russian men (and probably a few of the women) should get rid of their beards and be clean-shaven.

This move met with some resistance so he imposed a tax on beards!

Answer: True

When you buy your weekend supply of marijuana in North Carolina, you have to pay tax on it (a similar law applies in ten other states in the USA). Surprisingly, the tax department won't sic the police onto you or your connection - they'll merely give you the required tax stamps to show that you paid the tax. Since 1990, it seems, only 77 Tarheels have paid the tax. Those caught with illegal drugs and no tax stamps ended up paying fines.

Answer: England

King William III of England came up with idea of this tax, which affected primarily the prosperous citizens and was a way of getting around the idea of income tax (it had been proposed but found no favour with the people who saw income tax as an unwarranted bureaucratic intrusion into private matters - sound familiar?).

The window tax proved to be about as popular as income tax and was deemed by the populace to be a tax on light and air! When the tax was introduced in 1696 it consisted of two parts - a flat rate of two shillings on the house itself, and a variable amount for houses with more than ten windows. If your house had between ten and twenty windows, you paid an extra four shillings, and homeowners whose residences had more than twenty windows paid eight shillings over and above the flat rate of two shillings. (In 1766 the number of tax free windows was reduced to seven and in 1825 the rate was changed again to allow eight tax free windows).

In 1778 the base rate of two shillings per house was changed to a variable rate, in accordance with the value of the property. In time the window tax, while still unpopular, became something of a status symbol. The extremely wealthy, when building new homes, made sure that the architect's design would include as many windows as possible. This, I suppose, was the 17th/18th century version of "If you've got it, flaunt it".

When the window tax was introduced in Scotland by William Pitt in the 1780s (well after the 1707 Act of Union which made the Scots British subjects) it proved to be as popular as it was in England and even today you can see "Pitt's Pictures' (blacked out windows) in Edinburgh. The tax was finally repealed in 1851 and replaced by a property tax, known as House Duty, which was assessed according to the value of the property in question.

Answer: Rumania

It will cost you four leu to spend the night with your sweetie at Alexandru Ioan Coza University in Rumania, even if you're only burning the midnight oil and not burning with passion. With 1,800 students living on campus, the university is raking in a tidy sum of about 28,000 annually, which is roughly $8,745 US, 6,651 Euro or 5,985 British pounds.

The money paid in tax goes toward repairs in the dorm buildings. Evidently, the sex tax receipts have become trophy items with young men.