A strange and unnerving thing happened today. I received an envelope at my safe house address that was actually addressed to me. At first I thought it must be from Inspector Panettone as no one else knows where I am hiding except Interpol, or at least no one is supposed to know.
But there it was, and even stranger it was a letter from the tax authorities. Now I know that the old saying really is true – there are no certainties in life except death and taxes – but still I was amazed they had tracked me down. They are harder to escape than my former associates.
What’s more the letter said I have a huge liability, not surprisingly I suppose as I’ve never paid a penny of tax before in my life. You tend not to in the mafia.
It led to me doing a little research into what people have been taxed for in the past, because there has never been life without taxation. The Rosetta Stone, the key to translating ancient Egyptian scripts, records a tax exemption for Egyptian priests. I discovered that people have often been taxed in very odd ways.
In ancient Rome there was a urine tax as this valuable commodity was used for laundering and teeth brushing. Scutage was a medieval tax on knights which allowed them to opt out of fighting. Peter the Great of Russia later copied Henry VIII’s beard tax, which had the perverse effect of making beards a status symbol for those who could afford to impress. For over 150 years there was a window tax in England until it was repealed due to the negative effects on light and ventilation.
Playing cards, wallpaper, hats, clocks, tea, soap and fireplaces have all been taxed, and in every case this has led to various forms of evasion. So, for example hat makers renamed their creations “headgear”. In New York currently there is a sliced bagel tax as you have to pay an additional 8 cents if your bagel is sliced, toasted or served with toppings so best to just buy plain. The pharaohs imposed a Nile mud tax as mud was connected with agricultural fertility.