Tim Worstall sings the “praises” for some of the worst taxation ideas in history:
Aske Hall from Morris’s Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen (1880).
Wikimedia Commons
Imagine having a tax even more stupid than the one generally agreed to be the most stupid ever?
Mansion tax inspectors will target homes with views of the countryside and driveways, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Government valuation agents will be sent out with a checklist of features supposed to signal an increase in a property’s estimated value.
They include whether the house is set in scenic surroundings, if it has a conservatory, and even the number of parking spaces and bathrooms.
It comes after The Telegraph revealed that HMRC agents will be able to demand entry to people’s properties to assess their value for the levy.
Sigh. So, the most stupid tax ever is generally agreed to be the Windows Tax. This led to people bricking up their windows in order to avoid the tax and therefore live in the dark just to middle-finger the revenue. Well, OK, giving the revenue the middle-finger is an honourable thing to do but still, forcing people to live in the dark and dank via your choice of taxation methods is generally agreed to be very stupid indeed.
The thing is this is not, in fact, the most stupid tax ever. This was actually a replacement — a less bad replacement — of the tax which went before. Which was the Hearth Tax. Window tax was under Willie III and it replaced the hearth tax of Charlie II — if you are unblessed by being English yes, C II was before W III.
The aim and intent was the same with both — tax those rich bastards with large houses. A mansion tax that is. But taxing hearths means getting into the house to count the number of hearths. Which then runs up against that Englishman’s home and castle and all that — basic civil liberties stuff. And, of course, the expense of a team of people going around to count fireplaces. And the protection thugs they’ll need when knocking on the door of Squire Haggard. So, not sensible, that. Plus, of course, people will reduce their tax bill by blocking up fireplaces and generally living worse, poorer and colder lives by doing so — but being able to middle-finger the taxman.
The windows tax was an advance on this. We still get the poncey rich bastards in their big houses but we can do so by a clerk walking down the street and counting. No civil liberties violations there and it’s hugely, vastly, cheaper.
Except, of course, we’ve now only got the second most stupid tax in all history.
And back to the present day. There’s that desire to tax the poncey rich in their big houses. So, they’re going back to the hearth tax. Instruments of the State get to invade the righteous castle and thereby — very expensively — tot up the tax. When what we actually want is a simple, from the street, method of valuing the big poncey houses.
