AMF ADVISORS BLOG
The Weird and Wonderful History of Taxes
Before there were cloud accounting apps and quarterly filing deadlines, there were governments taxing windows, beards, and (seriously) urine. Here’s a tour through the strangest taxes in history — and what they still teach us about money today.
Every era gets the tax it deserves — or at least, the tax its government could actually collect. Long before income tax existed in anything like its modern form, rulers taxed whatever they could count: windows, hats, playing cards, even facial hair. Some of these taxes shaped architecture. One of them started a revolution. All of them tell you something about how people respond when the government reaches into their pocket: they adapt, they dodge, and every so often, they revolt. Here are nine of the strangest taxes ever levied, in roughly chronological order.
1. Rome Taxed Urine (Yes, Really)
Public latrines in ancient Rome doubled as a raw material source: collected urine was rich in ammonia, which tanners and launderers (fullers) used to clean and whiten wool and togas. Emperor Vespasian saw a business opportunity and taxed the merchants who bought it, using the revenue to help refill the treasury and fund public works after a brutal civil war.
The phrase is still used today — and so, in spirit, is the principle behind it. Tax authorities generally don’t care where your money came from, only that it’s reportable. (The IRS, for what it’s worth, technically requires you to report income from illegal activities too.)
2. England Taxed Windows — So People Bricked Them Up
Introduced under William III as a workaround for an unpopular income tax, the window tax charged homeowners based on how many windows their house had, on the theory that bigger, wealthier homes had more of them. People responded exactly how you’d expect: they bricked up or boarded over windows to duck into a lower tax band. Look closely at Georgian-era buildings across the UK today and you can still spot the outlines of these “blind windows.” Public health concerns over dark, poorly ventilated homes eventually helped get the tax repealed in 1851.
3. Peter the Great Taxed Beards
Fresh off a tour of Western Europe in 1698, Tsar Peter the Great decided Russia’s traditional beards symbolized everything backward about the country. He started by personally shaving courtiers on the spot. When that went over about as well as you’d imagine — the Orthodox Church considered beards sacred — he switched to an annual tax instead: up to 100 rubles a year for nobles and merchants, a single kopek for everyone else.
Pay up, and you got a small bronze or silver token stamped with a beard and the phrase “the beard tax has been taken,” which you had to carry at all times to prove it — or risk being forcibly shaved by the police on the spot. It’s basically a medieval registration sticker for your face.
4. England Taxed Wallpaper
Under Queen Anne, patterned, printed, or painted wallpaper was taxed by the square yard, with the rate climbing over the following century. Buyers found the obvious workaround: purchase plain, untaxed paper and have the pattern hand-stenciled on afterward. The unintended result was almost democratic — decorative wallpaper became more accessible to lower-income households through the workaround than it was through the taxed product itself.
5. The Tax That Made the Ace of Spades Fancy
England slapped a stamp duty on playing cards starting in the early 1700s. From 1765 onward, manufacturers had to buy their Ace of Spades directly from the government’s Stamp Office, which printed an official (and increasingly ornate) duty mark on it. That’s the actual reason the Ace of Spades is traditionally the most decorated card in the deck — it was government-issued proof of tax payment. Forging one was serious business: it was a capital offense, and at least one man was executed for it in 1805.
6. England Taxed Hats, By the Fanciness
Under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, hats were taxed on a sliding scale by price — a few pence for a cheap hat, up to two shillings for anything over twelve. Retailers needed a license to sell them, displayed a “Dealer in Hats by Retail” sign, and every hat sold got a revenue stamp glued inside the lining. As with the playing cards, forging that stamp carried the death penalty. It’s an oddly direct ancestor of the tiered luxury taxes still used today.
7. The Brick Tax That Made Bricks Bigger
Introduced to help fund Britain’s wars in the American colonies, this tax charged brickmakers per thousand bricks — so brickmakers simply started making bigger bricks, needing fewer of them per building. Some “gobs,” as the oversized bricks in Leicestershire were nicknamed, reached more than nine inches long. The government eventually caught on, capped brick dimensions by law in 1801, and doubled the tax on anything oversized. It’s a genuinely striking early example of a tax literally reshaping a physical product — something modern manufacturers still navigate around emissions brackets and shipping-weight tiers.
8. France's Salt Tax Helped Spark a Revolution
The gabelle forced French households to buy a government-set minimum amount of salt at inflated, fixed prices — while the nobility and clergy were largely exempt. The unfairness bred a thriving black market in smuggled salt (punishable by the galleys or worse) and became one of the specific grievances written into the formal complaints submitted ahead of the 1789 Estates-General. The gabelle was abolished within the first year of the French Revolution. It remains one of history’s clearest examples of what happens when a tax code’s exemptions protect the people who can least justify them.
9. The Fat Tax That Lasted 13 Months
Weird taxes aren’t just a history-book thing. In 2011, Denmark introduced a tax on foods high in saturated fat — butter, meat, cheese — aimed at a genuine public health problem. Shoppers responded by driving across the border to Germany and Sweden for cheaper groceries, businesses complained about the administrative burden, and the government repealed it about thirteen months later, alongside scrapping a planned sugar tax. Hungary took a similar swing the same year with its “chips tax” on salty, sugary, and caffeinated products — and unlike Denmark’s, that one is still in effect today, having been expanded rather than repealed.
Same basic idea, two very different outcomes. It’s a good reminder that a tax designed to change behavior only works if people can’t easily route around it — a lesson that applies just as much to a national sin tax as it does to how you structure your own business’s finances.
Taxes Have Always Been Weird. Yours Doesn't Have to Be Painful.
You don’t have to brick up a window or hide your beard token to stay on the right side of a tax authority today — you just need a good accountant. AMF Advisors helps businesses across Canada, the UAE, and the UK stay compliant, organized, and ahead of every deadline.