If you are an American citizen, or just somebody who has noticed all the H&R Block commercials on TV, you know this coming Friday, April 15th, is Tax Day. It’s the day when your taxes need to be filed, or at least an extension needs to be filed.
Taxes.
What’s that all about anyway?
I was watching an episode of Cosmos the other night. They were talking about the evolution of the human species.
At what point on our evolutionary journey did we start taxing one another?
Here’s an interesting fact I found out about taxation in the land of Egypt thousands of years ago…
During the various reins of the Egyptian Pharaohs tax collectors were known as scribes. During one period the scribes imposed a tax on cooking oil. To insure that citizens were not avoiding the cooking oil tax scribes would audit households to insure that appropriate amounts of cooking oil were consumed and that citizens were not using leavings generated by other cooking processes as a substitute for the taxed oil. (Source [ http://www.taxworld.org/History/TaxHistory.htm ])
Fascinating stuff.
Hey, if you’re into this kind of thing – you know, learning about why we do the things we do, then check out this article for more fascinating facts about taxes [ http://newint.org/features/2008/10/01/tax-history/ ].
If you’re not interested, just consider this a friendly reminder to make sure you have your taxes together, or at least an extension, by this Friday. In the meantime, enjoy this Pederscope rerun I recorded a couple weeks ago when I visited my tax guru…
Keys to Being the Difference – 52: Do Your Taxes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sLjaQbiS4]
Speaking of the Pederscope, this past week I also started simultaneously broadcasting the Pederscope on Facebook as well. Tune in every weekday morning at 8:35 am Central to catch it.
Have a great week!