{"id":238,"date":"2025-04-22T22:30:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T22:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/?p=238"},"modified":"2025-04-22T22:30:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T22:30:59","slug":"friends-romans-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/friends-romans-taxpayers\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends, Romans, Taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The world\u2019s first tax, imposed 3,000 years BC, was called the \u201cheqat,\u201d and it required farmers to pay 20% of their harvest to the pharaoh. Given what we know about human nature, we can assume the first efforts to avoid the heqat began around 2,999 BC. Thus began a fiscal arms race that persists until today. Pharaohs, kings, emperors, and even democratically elected legislatures impose taxes to finance government operations. Then, clever planners step in to keep their clients one step ahead of the rules.

Last week,\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0published a fascinating story<\/a>\u00a0about a papyrus scroll discovered decades ago in the Judean desert west of the Dead Sea. It consists of a memorandum for a judicial hearing against two men named Gadalius and Saulus. Specifically, it details how they schemed to fake the sale and manumission of several slaves to avoid paying taxes to the Emperor Hadrian sometime around AD 130.

The mechanics of the fraud sound like something a too-clever accountant or attorney might try today. Saulus, who lived in Judea, arranged the sale to Chaereas, who lived in nearby Arabia. Gadalius, who was the son of a notary, then forged the appropriate paperwork. But the slaves themselves stayed with Saulos. \u201cThus, on paper, the slaves disappeared in Judea but never arrived in Arabia, thereby becoming invisible to Roman administrators,\u201d said Anna Dolganov, an Austrian archaeologist who deciphered the ancient scroll. \u201cHenceforth, all taxes on these slaves could be avoided.\u201d

The scroll offers remarkable insights into life and law under the empire. Gadalius was no stranger to the law, with convictions for extortion, counterfeiting, banditry, sedition, and failing to show for jury duty. We learn about the torture of one of the slaves, and the \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d techniques authorities used to question the miscreants. There was an informant \u2013 possibly Cheareas\u2014who dropped a dime to Roman authorities. We see defendants pointing fingers elsewhere,\u00a0with Gadalius blaming the forgeries on his conveniently dead father and Saulus blaming the manumissions on Chaereas.\u00a0We even learn how effective prosecutors were in pursuing their case.\u00a0\u201cThis is the edge of the Roman Empire, and boom, we see legal practitioners of high caliber who are competent in Roman law,\u201d Dr. Dolganov said.

Sadly, the scroll doesn\u2019t tell us how the trial ended. If the defendants were convicted, and they were lucky, they could have received anything from fines and exile to work in the salt mines. If the judge was having a particularly hard day, though, they could have been sentenced to \u201cdamnation ad bestias.\u201d That sounds impressively civilized in the original Latin. But in English, it translates to \u201ccondemnation to beasts,\u201d meaning the convicted men would be killed by wild animals in a public spectacle.

The sort of sleight of hand that Gadalius and Saulus used in their effort to sidestep the emperor lives on today in countless forms. (Perhaps even more, now that getting caught doesn\u2019t mean leopards eating your face!) Twenty years ago, for example, the accounting firm of KPMG admitted criminal wrongdoing for its \u201cSon of BOSS\u201d scheme that involved faking losses from options trading. And even today, car buyers in states with high sales taxes like California and New York will sometimes establish LLCs in zero-tax Montana to buy their vehicles. (Of course, police in California and New York aren\u2019t shy about stopping drivers sporting Montana plates on their cars.)

So, is getting out of a tax bill \u2013 legitimately, or not \u2013 the world\u2019s second-oldest profession? Maybe! Whether it is or not, we understand you don\u2019t just want to know how much you owe. You want to know how to pay\u00a0less<\/em>. So, call us for insights you need!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s first tax, imposed 3,000 years BC, was called the \u201cheqat,\u201d and it required farmers to pay 20% of their harvest to the pharaoh. Given what we know about human nature, we can assume the first efforts to avoid the heqat began around 2,999 BC. Thus began a fiscal arms race that persists until today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,10,11,9,6,64,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-taxes","8":"tag-tax","9":"tag-tax-reduction","10":"tag-tax-savings","11":"tag-tax-strategy","12":"tag-taxes","13":"tag-taxpolicy","14":"tag-wealth-tax","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}