Inventing Tax Records

By 1900BC, the Mesopotamians were levying taxes on everything from livestock to funerals. So someone invented "smuggling." But smuggling didn't always work. The University of Pennsylvania museum includes a letter from a trader cautioning his employee not to play it straight: "Irra's son sent smuggled goods to Pushuken but his smuggled goods were intercepted. The Palace then threw Pushuken in jail! The guards are strong . . . please don't smuggle anything else!"

Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, the center of civilization had shifted northeast to ancient Greece. By then, someone had invented "cash." (Unlike cuneiform, cash is still around. However, if ApplePay and Bitcoin have their way, that won't be true much longer.) Greek society cleverly positioned paying taxes as an ethical obligation, and the richest citizens actually competed to see who could give more. (This tradition survives today, in slightly different form, as today's richest citizens compete to buy themselves Senate seats and governors' mansions.)

Today, of course, we store our tax records on paper or in the cloud. But we're pretty sure you don't want your records to show you paid too much. So pick up the phone to book an appointment, and maybe someday future historians will record your plan to pay less!