There may be some weird taxes today, but they’re nothing compared to some of the things that have been taxed throughout the world’s history. 

For example, did you know there was a “fat tax” in ancient Egypt?

OK, it’s not exactly what you think—you weren’t taxed for being overweight. What was taxed was cooking oil, or fat. Technically, the Pharaoh owned cooking oil, but people had to pay him a tax when they bought it.

Ancient Egyptians tried to get out of this tax by reusing the cooking oil or by cooking with alternative types of fat, so Pharoah sent his scribes to personally visit everyone’s house and make sure they were only using new cooking oil. 

This is actually the oldest tax that we know of.

Let’s look at a few other weird taxes from history.

12th-century England: the “cowardice tax”

In medieval England, knights lived for no other purpose than to fight for king and country. Or at least, that was the idea.

Some knights could think of things they’d rather do with their time, so they did whatever they could to get out of going off to war. And sometimes, that meant paying the “cowardice tax.”

Its official name was scutage, and it was a tax you could pay to get out of fighting. Under King Henry I, whose reign lasted from 1100-1135, the tax was relatively low. 

But when King John came to power, he raised it by 300% and taxed everyone who wasn’t at war—even if there was no war to be fought!

1st-century A.D. Rome: the urine tax

Can you believe there was a time when people bought and sold urine? 

It’s true: in ancient Rome, urine was so valuable that the Emperor Vespasian actually levied a tax on the purchase of urine. 

Urine was used for tanning, laundry, teeth brushing (yuck!) and other purposes. As such, it was collected from public urinals and sold. 

If you’ve ever heard the Latin saying “Pecunia non olet” or “Money doesn’t stink,” you now know where it came from.

17th-century Russia: the beard tax

In the late 1600s, Russian Czar Peter the Great visited Western Europe in disguise to see how Russia could be more like her modern neighbors. When he returned, he was hell-bent on modernizing his empire.

Among other things, that meant every man needed a close shave.

Peter announced this at a royal reception attended by many of his officials, where he took out a huge razor and personally shaved every guest in attendance.

Eventually, the Czar decided that people could opt out of the new shave law, but if they did, they would have to pay a tax. This became known as the beard tax.

17th-century England: the window tax

Meanwhile, in England, the government decided to levy a window tax. Each household was now forced to pay a tax for each of its windows.

As you can imagine, people found ways to get out of this new tax. If you’ve ever been to England and seen a house that has some of its windows filled in with brick, you know exactly how they did it.

But the lack of windows led to cold temperatures and poor airflow, which made a lot of people sick. Eventually, it got so bad that they finally repealed the tax in 1851.

18th-century England: the hat tax

Apparently there were a lot of weird taxes in England. One of these was the hat tax of 1784. Any man who wanted to wear a hat had to pay a tax, based on how much the hat cost. 

It sounds weird, but the reasoning was that this would force the higher classes to pay more, whereas the poor, who likely had one hat or none, wouldn’t be subject to any additional tax. 

Again, the English people tried to get around it. Since the tax only applied to hats, hat-makers decided to just stop calling their products hats. But the government caught on: in 1804, they launched a tax on “headgear.” 

The tax was repealed in 1811.