This April 15 the American people once again will face the deadline for participating in a tradition that dates virtually to the beginning of recorded human history: paying taxes.
The first record of a government imposing taxes on its people appears on clay tablets excavated from a town in Sumer, between the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq.It was 6,000 years ago, and the leaders instituted heavy taxation during a war. But when the carnage ceased, the tax collectors refused to give up their powers.
Recorded on the clay tablets: "You can have a Lord, you can have a King, but the man to fear is the tax collector."
Some things just don't change.
In ancient Egypt, kings levied at least a 20 percent tax on everything, triggering land confiscations, flight to avoid taxes, massive arrests and civil war. By the third century B.C., Egypt was near collapse.
Out of this came the Rosetta Stone, key to understanding the lost languages of Egypt. Chiseled in rock was an imperial order to cancel all tax debts, return confiscated land, free tax prisoners and return tax fugitives to their lands and jobs.
So, one of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time was a tax document.
No nation better illustrates the hazards of reckless taxation than Imperial Spain. By the early 16th century, Spain was the most powerful European state since the Romans. Under Charles V, Spain's empire was the largest the world had known. It would take less than a century for this vast empire to begin to disintegrate.
Taxes provide the clue. The most hated of all Spanish taxes was the alcabala, a 10 percent excise on the transfer of all real and personal property - including food. Worse, the tax was paid many times over on the same goods as they changed hands.
As the rates increased, the alcabala depressed industry and caused a terrible trade imbalance - lower-taxed foreign goods flooded the Spanish market and higher-taxed Spanish goods couldn't compete in foreign markets.
Meanwhile, a myriad of imperial taxes, many approaching 20 percent, was crushing Castile, the political and economic heart of Spain. When the Crown announced to its provinces a new round of taxes, the news sparked tax revolts throughout the Spanish empire.
Just when Spain needed all her reserves for crucial battles against the Dutch, French and English, she spent her last resources at home fighting tax rebels.
Unlike her contemporaries, Britain was the only major European country during the 17th and 18th centuries without extensive excise taxes.
English tax designers had grasped a critical piece of economic common sense: If British workers were forced to pay high taxes, British capitalists would have to pay high wages.
By keeping workers relatively free of taxation, English traders could outsell their competitors. They did; and Britain became the leading commercial nation of the world for 200 years.
You don't need to be a tax historian to realize that tax moderation and simplicity - two features conspicuously lacking in our current system - are what help build strong economies.