Taxes – one of my favourite subjects; not because I love paying them (I pay them because I’m a good citizen and I have to) but I do like talking about them.
Tax is referred to as “A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government” or “A strain or heavy demand”. Taxes have plagued us since before medieval times and they have certainly come a long way since then. Along the way there have been many taxes which have been tried and discarded; for instance, there has been a tax on beard growth – one I’m sure many would like to see reintroduced today, a tax on how many windows your home has; there have also been many more taxes which have been tried and are still with us (even a toasted sandwich tax) – the mind boggles.
Thanks to today’s technology we can delve a little deeper so you may be interested to know that if you search for the word “Tax” on Google it returns 34 pages, but combine those with all the other tax type search options there are hundreds of pages; probably even thousands – in fact just the word tax is searched for 33,100 times a month. You also have endless tax forms both online and offline and lots of rules and regulations associated with them too. It’s a wonder we ever get any sleep.
But the big question is “How many taxes does the UK have?”. And the answer is I don’t really know but I’m sure there is someone out there who does know. Is that you? If it is I’d love to know.
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