The Counter-Robin Hoods
| by Tisaranee Gunasekara
“I shop everywhere, anything that fits perfect will be purchased, price and name does not matter”.
Rohitha Rajapaksa (Daily Mirror – 8.5.2013)
( November 28, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In her autobiographical-history of Pre-revolutionary China, Han Suyin explains how the country’s incompetent and spendthrift rulers used taxes as a mode of wealth-extraction from ordinary people. Kettle tax, stocking tax, bedding tax, hog tax, wealthy house tax, army mule tax, troop movement tax, soldier reward tax…the list was endless. “There was inaugurated in certain areas a ‘happy tax’ for the purpose of promoting happiness on the day taxes were paid” .