Throughout history, people have been subjected to a variety of strange taxes. Ancient Egyptians had to pay the pharaohs a tax on cooking oil. Russian emperor Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards. England’s William III established a window tax in 1696. It was a fee paid by homeowners based on the number of windows their homes had. The tax was intended to make up for revenue lost through coin clipping — a form of financial fraud where people broke off small bits of silver or gold coins to melt down and sell, thus diminishing the value of the currency. On paper, the window tax was supposed to function as a progressive wealth tax, levied on homeowners with houses that featured 10-14 windows. In practice, however, the tax affected people from all income levels. It was especially hard on urban areas where large boardinghouses with individual apartments were unfairly counted as single households. So, to get around the tax, homeowners began bricking up some of their windows. Today, many of those houses still have the bricked-up windows.
