Taxes and History

Naomi Rawlings here today. We've just finished up tax season here in the United States--how lovely for us.

I'm sure you understand that taxes have been around for a long time, certainly for centuries, and possibly even for millenia. Did you also know that evading taxes has been around for just as long?

Yep. It sure has, and my most recent novel, The Soldier's Secrets, deals with exactly that--a band of powerful people who have gotten themselves very rich by evading the King of England's customs agents and smuggling goods like tea and tobacco into England. These smugglers would also secretly spirit wool out of England as well, because there was an export tax on all wool leaving the country.

Of course, the hero and heroine of The Soldier's Secrets aren't helping the smugglers, but they still find themselves rather tangled up in some of the smuggler's nefarious deeds.

About the time we were throwing the Boston Tea Party here in the United States, 75% of the tea in England was being smuggled, according to some historians. So are you surprised to learn that smuggling and taxes are so closely related? Are you shocked that people were trying to evade taxes hundreds of years ago?