The window tax

For 150 years, England had a "window tax." So did France, Ireland, and Scotland. Back then this progressive wealth tax was gauged by the size of a house, and the number of windows (and other openings, in France) was used as an easy way to estimate that size.

We've had a similar practice in our studio for 12 years: the complexity of a house is determined by the number of openings. The system works very well for us, better than if we counted wall area or living space. For example, a façade design for a big garage or a windowless warehouse would cost very little, because there aren't many openings.

Over time, the "window tax" came to be called one of the main causes of unhealthy cities, as well as a "tax on light and health," because people built fewer windows to lower what they owed.

England also had a tax on the number of bricks in a wall. There was a push to allow larger individual bricks, but the government soon capped the size of bricks in production and imposed a double tax on the bigger ones.

There was a tax on wallpaper, too. Homeowners dodged it by buying plain paper and applying the pattern themselves with a stencil.