Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages

Joel Slemrod · Michael Keen

May 2021 · Gildan Media · Narrated by Walter Dixon

About this audiobook

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 eighteenth-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, readers 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.

Ratings and reviews

Amazing book. So many interesting stories and details, all tied back to economics and public finance.

About the author

Michael Keen is deputy director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund. Joel Slemrod is professor of economics in the Department of Economics and the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Walter Dixon is a winner of Audible's "#1 Editor's Choice and Customer Favorites" award. He has narrated more than 200 audiobooks; performed in musical theater, drama and opera productions, and professional stand-up comedy; and voiced commercials, corporate videos, animated features, and vintage radio dramas.