History of Hair – Beard Tax

The government has a history of imposing various dumb rules and tax laws. However, we bet you never would have guessed that someone would have thought of inventing a tax that citizens must pay if they choose to let their facial hair grow. We can even fathom the reason as to why any leader would impose such a silly tax.

But, back in 1705, Emperor Peculiar Peter of Russia instituted a beard tax. Those who paid the beard tax were required to carry a “beard token”. Even though we know that the beard tax was introduced at that time, nobody knows why it was introduced.

We’re going to go ahead and guess that the tax was invented because Peculiar King Peter could not grow a beard himself, and introduced the tax as a way of pretending like he didn’t actually want to have a beard. He also believed that beards were a “superfluous burden”, so he might actually have been slightly insane.