Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue

Tax Follies and Wisdom Through the Ages

By: Michael Keen, Joel Slemrod

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

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 18th-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, listeners 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.

©2021 Princeton University Press (P)2021 Gildan Media

Interesting, informative, and fun

This is a great book for economists and other readers interested in learning more about tax policy. A must read!

Interesting enough popular survey, ace narration

Eclectic but grounded survey of tax policy stuff. Solid use of anecdotes. Good distilled explanations of concepts. Self-deprecating overall tone of writing with some headscratching moments (sometimes adorkable, condescending, or wtf). Narrator's enthusiasm and nuance is the most artful I've encountered for nonfiction on Audible. Respect.

Good book on tax policy and history

This is a very entertaining book despite the topic. It has lots of tax history to explain the various academic tax issues discussed in the book.

Historical idiocies

This is a really fun book with lots of tax history. I would have liked to see a bit more on the Physiocrats and Adam Smith which would explain how Henry George drove theory to its logical conclusion. You can only grab a revenue from the earnings of land, labour or capital - and only one of them can’t run away, stop breeding or working or rust out or wear out. Go figure.

As to VAT they might have mentioned it is not a consumption tax. Children are to labour what reinvestment in plant and equipment is to capital. VAT/GST taxes expenditure on raising children as consumption not as labour force replenishment. Adam Smith would have seen through this and not been surprised by the collapse in European birth rates since the 60s.

V.A.T.

“Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue” is a painful and laborious book to listen to, in part, because of its length but mostly because of its subject. Few citizens appreciate having their hard-earned wealth and income reduced by government taxation. However, the co-authors are well qualified and informative in explaining how important taxes are to every form of government to insure citizen’s peace, welfare, and protection. More importantly, they show how countries of the world have both aided and diminished prosperity of nation-state’ economies with good and bad tax policies.

Keen and Slemrod do not clearly explain why they think a VAT is the solution to a better tax system than America’s current policy. Reid explains a VAT is a broad-based low-rate tax that will reduce the need for a tax collection bureaucracy because it eliminates corporate loopholes, broadens and reduces tax rates, and equalizes citizens’ tax burden. Reid believes more revenue would be produced to reduce America’s debt. It would also reduce the expense of America’s tax collection bureaucracy. In theory both government expense and the deficit would be aided by a VAT tax policy.