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jasonfurman's review
5.0
An enjoyable, insightful and encyclopedic romp through taxes over multiple millennia and multiple continents. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is organized into parts that correspond to typical public finance concerns like incidence (who pays taxes), fairness (both "vertical" for people with different incomes and "horizontal" for people in similar situations), efficiency (particularly not changing desirable behaviors--but changing undesirable behaviors), and tax administration. The authors cover the role of taxes in various historical events (starting with the American Revolution), the ways that the "wisdom" of the ancients has continued to inform taxes today as authorities have struggled with the concerns for as long as we've had taxes--ideas about what was fair, finding markers associated with income or wealth, and how to encourage or discourage different behavior (although exactly what constitutes good behavior has changed over time, it is as hard for us to understand taxing beards as it would have been for Russians a few centuries ago to understand taxing carbon emissions).
strugk's review
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.0
An interesting read, a little chaotic. Authors are trustworthy, knowledgable and avoiding aligning with any particular agenda. But if they had an agenda, the set of examples might seem like cherry picking. For big part of the book examples seem to be chosen based on their entertaining potential - but at some point the bar is lowered or the reader gets accustomed and their entertaining factor seems to be lower.
guojing's review
3.0
Far too heavy on tax historical anecdotes and with a too-frequent eye to things that may reflect negatively upon taxation as an institution, but certainly not anti-tax so much as desiring a Theory of Everything as it relates to taxation.