Taken from http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/moneyweekly/budget2005/quirkyfacts.html Dodgy taxes These days we grit our teeth and wait for Budget news on alcohol, tobacco and fuel duties, or inheritance, stamp duty or capital gains tax. But back in the nineteenth century you would have been taxed according to how many dogs you had. Tax collectors apparently used to kick the front door and count how many barks there were. How's that for a _stealth tax_ (http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/finance/mw/artlink/*http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/moneyweekly/stealthtaxes.html) . Taxes on hats, dice, clocks, salt, hair powder, gloves, artificial flowers, menservants, game certificates and armorial bearings have also been used in the past. In the first half of the nineteenth century people were even taxed according to how many windows their house had, which eventually led to many houses having windows bricked up. But tax oddities are by no means a thing of the distant past. McVities fought a tribunal case in 1991 against the classification of Jaffa Cakes as a VAT-able chocolate–covered biscuit. It asserted that they were instead a tax-free cake, and won its case by bringing a giant 12-inch Jaffa Cake to the hearing. Until the 1970s it was possible to buy a 12-foot ladder for less than a nine-inch one, because the shorter ladder was taxable, while the longer one was not. Linda and Tony