From 1784 to 1811 the British government levied a tax on which item of men’s attire?
Hat tax today. Hat tax The hat tax, or hat duty, was a tax levied by the British Government from 1784 to 1811 on men's hats. The tax was introduced during the first ministry of Pitt the Younger and was designed to be a simple way of raising revenue for the government in a rough accordance with each person's relative wealth. It was supposed that the rich would have a large number of expensive hats, whereas the poor might have one cheap hat or none at all. The hat tax required hat retailers to buy a licence and to display the sign
Ad valorem tax only on the final end user, unlike a gross receipts tax levied on the intermediate business which purchases materials for production or ordinary operating expenses prior to delivering a service or product to the marketplace. This prevents so-called tax "cascading" or "pyramiding," in which an item is taxed more than once as it makes its way from production to final retail sale. There are several types of sales taxes: seller or vendor taxes, consumer excise taxes, retail transaction taxes, or value-added taxes. A value-added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST), is a tax on exchanges. It is levied