The Reading List has just paid its taxes, and therefore thought to itself: What are the great “income tax” novels? The problem is, the Reading List is unaware of many books whose plots center, or even tangentially touch, on the income tax. One reason for this is perhaps that the Reading List prefers books written before the modern income tax. Could there even be a causal link between the decline of literature and the rise of the income tax? This might make a great dissertation topic, but perhaps it’s just a nasty case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
In any case, there is some literature in which taxes do play a role. For example:
The Ecclesiazusae, by Aristophanes. In what is perhaps Aristophanes’ funniest comedy, Athens establishes what might be called a 100 percent tax on private property. Citizens are forced to give up their possessions for the good of the state. And as in the modern nanny state, extremely private pastimes become subject to government regulation as well — including a requirement that the young marry only the old, it being inegalitarian for one good-looking person to marry another.
The Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle. Wasn’t the hero always robbing the tax money that the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the regional tax- collector for the welfare state, had extracted from the angry white male middle classes, who worked hard and played by the rules?
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Scarlett needs money to pay the taxes on Tara, so she cuts up the velvet drapes to make herself a dress before going to woo Rhett Butler. This scene is good in the book, great in the movie, and even better in the Carol Burnett TV rendition, in which Scarlett wears the curtain rod along with the curtains.
