Rebellion, rascals, and revenue : tax follies and wisdom through the ages

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The work Rebellion, rascals, and revenue : tax follies and wisdom through the ages represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in City Libraries, City of Gold Coast. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

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Label

Rebellion, rascals, and revenue : tax follies and wisdom through the ages

Title remainder

tax follies and wisdom through the ages

Statement of responsibility

Michael Keen, Joel Slemrod

Title variation

Princeton University Press presents

Creator

• trueKeen, Michael

Contributor

• Slemrod, Joel

Author

• Slemrod, Joel
• trueKeen, Michael

Subject

• trueTax distribution
• trueTax evasion
• trueTax law
• trueTax policy
• trueTaxation
• Taxation -- History
• Taxation -- Miscellanea
• trueTax collection
• Taxation -- Social aspects
• trueWealth
• Nonfiction
• trueGreed
• Taxation -- Political aspects

Genre

• trueMiscellanea

Language

eng

Summary

Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts-and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic-from the plundering described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the (misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and Slemrod show that yesterday's tax systems have more in common with ours than we may think. Georgian England's window tax now seems quaint, but was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the Great's tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like today's carbon taxes aim to slow global warming

Pace

• trueFast-paced

Writing style

• trueEngaging

Dewey number

336.2/009

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography