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History
Oleomargarine Revenue Stamps
If they sell it, tax it
If you have thought about margarine in recent years, your thoughts were probably health related. You may even not have thought of “margarine” at all — many of these products are labeled as “buttery spread” now.
That labeling would have been illegal at one time, and even now there are restrictions on what these butter substitutes are called and what ingredients they may contain. Consumers are often confused as to both health issues and how to use these products in recipes that call for butter.
As interesting as that all is, that’s not my purpose here. Instead, I want to concentrate on one small aspect of the history of oleomargarine as represented by “revenue stamps”.
Taxes
Taxation is hardly new. We know that the Egyptians collected taxes five centuries ago and no doubt those who were collected from were complaining even then. I think it’s also fair to say that people probably started looking for ways to evade taxes just a few minutes after the first tax collector arrived.
One way to avoid taxes is to claim (truthfully or otherwise) that the tax has already been paid. That may not have been possible when the Pharaoh’s tax collector arrived at your fields as the harvest was coming in, but…
