Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Tax Day
Test your knowledge—and read our stories for a little extra help.
In honor of America’s favorite observance, happening today, here are some questions about that most thrilling of subjects: personal finance.
Atlantic Trivia
Forms
Advisers
Betting
The average U.S. tax filer spends 13 hours completing the form known by what four-digit number?
Multiply that 13 by 80.
And by the way, did you know that Russia’s Peter the Great taxed his subjects’ beards? On a lengthy tour throughout the (clean-shaven) Western Europe of the 1690s, the czar determined that Russians’ hirsuteness was holding them back, so he sought to modernize.
Peter began by literally shaving nobles’ beards off himself at an infamous party, but after widespread opposition to forced shearing—including from the Orthodox Church—Peter settled on a tax for any man who wanted to keep his beard.
So: Be careful when you wish that doing your taxes didn’t have to be so hairy.
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