April 15 is here. Although tax day may not change your personal history — except for making you and other Americans a little poorer — there have been many times when taxes and tax policies have changed history. Here are five of them.
Tax freedom and hieroglyphs. In 1799, when Napoleon Bonepart was in the middle of his Egyptian campaign, one of his soldiers found a large black stone in the Nile Delta near the town of Rashid (Rosetta). You know it today as the Rosetta Stone. The stone recorded the same message in three different scripts: ancient Greek, Demotic (which is ancient Egyptian written in a common script) and hieroglyphs.
The text was eventually translated, allowing scholars to read hieroglyphs for the first time in centuries. The stone explained that the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy V in 196 BC had granted a tax exemption for the resident priests at the temple in Memphis, one of the historic capitals of Egypt. The priests placed the stone in front of the temple to, in essence, tell any tax collectors to keep moving, thus promoting the principle that religious establishments would not be taxed.
Julius Ceasar, democratic socialist. Most people know that Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) became involved with the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra and that he was assassinated in the Roman Senate. But did you know he could have been a model for progressive politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.)?
Johns Hopkins University economists Stephen H. Hanke and Joshua Blustein write that Caesar took several controversial actions, including dividing the land among the poor “with the goal of the gradual equalization of the classes through a broad program of redistribution.” In addition, “He remitted a whole year of rent for poor tenants and ordered … the cancellation of one-fourth of all outstanding debt. He instituted rent controls and gave handouts of 100 denarii to each pleb [commoner].” He might also have tried to forgive all student loan debt, had that been an option.
Ceasar also reformed the tax system by introducing a customs tax and an inheritance tax and by imposing the first sales tax — a 1 percent flat rate applied across the empire. His successor, Caesar Augustus, raised the sales tax to 4 percent.
Hanke and Blustein warn that progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are following in Ceasar’s socialist footsteps.
A new tax leads to the New Testament. Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke begins, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”
Mary and Joseph traveled from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus had called for a census to update his tax rolls to increase revenue.
By requiring people to return to their ancestral homes, Caesar unknowingly fulfilled a biblical prophecy from the Old Testament book of Micah 5:2: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, … from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days …”
Who says good things can’t come from bad taxes?
Taxes and bareback riding. You have probably heard of Lady Godiva’s infamous ride. But you likely don’t know the backstory.
Lady Godiva — whose name in Old English was Godgifu (meaning God’s Gift) — was a pious, wealthy landowner and noblewoman in her own right, and the wife of Earl Leofric. In 1057, Leofric imposed heavy new taxes on his subjects in the town of Coventry. Lady Godiva pleaded with him to repeal the taxes, but Leofric refused.
Finally, Leofric tired of her pleadings and told her, “Mount your horse naked and ride through the marketplace of the town, from one side right to the other, while the people are congregated.” If she did, he would repeal the taxes.
The story goes that she took off her clothes, let down her long hair covering most of her body, and rode through the marketplace, accompanied by two soldiers. Leofric honored his agreement and rescinded the new taxes, except for the tax on horses.
Fear the (Russian) beard. The Russian Emperor Peter the Great (1672-1725) is widely considered one of Russia’s greatest monarchs. Peter was enamored with Western Europe and wanted Russians, a Slavic people, to embrace the styles and culture of the West. And so he imposed a tax on beards to encourage Russian men to abandon their traditional full beards and become clean-shaven like Westerners.
Sadly, although Peter wanted to make Russians more like Europeans, the goal of the current Russian “emperor” seems to be to make Europeans more like Russians.
Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.”
