An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages. 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. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation--and how the past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I. Plunder and Power
  • 1. Any Public Matter
    • Bengal to Boston
    • Never Such Disgrace
    • Why Bolivia Is Landlocked
    • Taxing the Light of Heaven
    • Not Everything Is About Tax. But . . .
  • 2. The Way We Were
    • A Quick Gallop through the Long History of Taxation
    • How Much?
    • Warfare and Welfare
    • Babbage’s Nightmare
    • Debt, Default, and Princes
    • Making Money
  • 3. By Another Name
    • Elizabeth I to Spectrum Auctions
    • Selling Sovereignty
    • Cheap Labor
      • Working for Nothing
      • A Rich Man’s War and a Poor Man’s Fight
    • Doing Your Bit
    • Paying Your (Feudal) Dues
    • Crossing the Line
    • And There’s More
      • Jobs for the Boys
      • A Tax on Stupidity
• Part II. Winners and Losers
  • 4. Fair Enough
    • Heads on Pikes
      • Poll Taxes and the English
      • Noble Causes
    • Trying to Be Fair
      • Pay for What You Get?
      • Pay What You Can?
    • Show Me a Sign
      • Taxing by Class
      • Taxing by Community
      • Taxing the Finer Things in Life
      • Presumptions of Prosperity
  • 5. This Colossal Engine of Finance
    • The Work of Giants: The Income Tax in Britain
    • The Dred Scott Decision of the Revenue
    • A Crime of Passion and the French Income Tax
    • Old Fears and New Directions
  • 6. Some Are More Equal Than Others
    • Taxing Femininity
    • Peculiar Tax Institutions
    • Leaps of Faith
    • Outsiders
      • Strangers in a Strange Land
      • Taxes as Punishment
    • Hard Choices
  • 7. Stick or Shift?
    • False Starts
    • Burgling Other People’s Intellect
    • You Must Remember This
    • Buddy, Can You Spare 1/20th of a Dime?
    • Things Aren’t Always What They Seem
      • Helping the Working Poor (or Their Employers)
      • Are Tax-Free Municipal Bonds a Giveaway to the Savvy Rich?
      • The Murky Incidence of the Corporate Tax
    • The Big Picture
• Part III. Changing Our Ways
  • 8. Breaking Bad and Making Good
    • Do the Right Thing
      • Family Matters
      • Taxing Knowledge
    • Tax Bads, Not Goods
      • Saving the Planet
      • Wind-Breaking Cows, Scary Dogs, and Cute Cats
    • The Wages of Sin
      • The Vile Custome
      • The Curse of the Drinking Classes
      • Sex, . . .
      • . . . Drugs, . . .
      • . . . But Not Much Rock and Roll
      • Unhealthy Living
    • Just Say No?
  • 9. Collateral Damage
    • Spurring Ingenuity
      • Stranger Things
      • Drawing a Line
    • Excess Burden
      • No Fire without Smoke
      • A Window on Excess Burden
  • 10. How to Pluck a Goose
    • Searching for the Holy Grail
      • War Profiteers and the Corporate Tax Revisited
      • Give Me Land, Lots of Land
      • Conscripting Wealth
    • Limiting the Damage
      • The Cleverest Man in England
      • Broaden the Base, Lower the Rate (Maybe)
    • Shaping a Tax System
    • How Many Feathers?
  • 11. Citizens of the World
    • Squeezing a Rice Pudding
    • Havens from the Tax Storm
    • The Rich Are Different from Us
      • They Don’t Live Here Any More
      • Don’t Tell
    • False Profits
      • If I Were You, I Wouldn’t Start from Here
      • A Farewell to Arms (Length Pricing)?
    • Tumbling Taxes
• Part IV. Taxes Don’t Collect Themselves
  • 12. Vlad the Impaler and the Gentle Art of Tax Collection
    • Mind the Gap
      • A Gallery of Tax Rascals
      • Known Unknowns
    • Many Sticks—and a Carrot or Two
      • Get to the Money First
      • Big Businesses Are the Tax Administrator’s Friend . . .
      • . . . And Small Businesses Are Their Nightmare
      • Information Rules
    • Trust but Verify
    • Taxpayers Are People Too
      • Principled (and Singing) Evaders
      • Making Honesty the Easiest Policy
  • 13. Someone Has to Do It
    • The Tax Collectors’ Gallery
    • Who Collects?
      • The Rise and Demise of Tax Farming (and Tax Farmers)
      • Kickbacks—Legal and Otherwise
      • Tax Independence
      • Privatizing Tax Collection
      • How Big Should Tax Administrations Be?
    • Tax Tech
• Part V. Making Taxes
  • 14. Taxing and Pleasing
    • The Finance Minister’s Dream
    • Starving the Beast
    • From Coventry to K Street
      • The Naked Truth about Lobbying
      • I Can’t Believe It’s Not (Taxed Like) Butter
      • The Taxes Chain Store Massacre
      • One Man’s Exemption
      • You Just Don’t Do That: Four Centuries of Not Taxing Food in Britain
    • Games Governments Play
      • Vanishing Acts
      • What’s in a Name?
      • Oops
    • Some Triumphs of Pretty Good Tax Policy
      • Lessons from Gucci Gulch, and Elsewhere
      • The Rise (and Rise) of the VAT
  • 15. The Shape of Things to Come
    • Taxes in Naboo and Utopia
    • Pillars of Tax Wisdom
      • Tax Revolts Are Rarely Just about Tax
      • Be Careful with Words
      • You May Be the One Paying for Lunch
      • Fair Taxation, Whatever That Is, Is Hard to Achieve
      • Taxation Is About Finding Good Proxies
      • Tax Avoiders and Evaders Are Wonderfully Creative
      • The Biggest Costs of Taxation May Be the Ones You Can’t See
      • Taxes Are Not Just for Raising Money
      • People Pay Taxes Because They Are Scared
      • Tax Sovereignty Is Becoming a Thing of the Past
      • Beware of Mantras
    • The Future and Beyond
      • Hard Times
      • Brave New Worlds
    • What Will They Think of Us?
• Notes
• References
• Illustration Credits
• Index