No tax season would be complete without a list of strange taxes assessed by various states and countries.
- Sliced bagels: New York charges a bagel-cutting tax at 8 cents per sliced or ready-to-eat bagel.
- Decorative pumpkins: In New Jersey, a painted, varnished, or cut pumpkin sold as a decoration is subject to sales tax. Pumpkins used as food are not.
- Tattoos: Arkansas charges sales tax on tattoos, piercings, and electrolysis.
- Everything delicious: Illinois not only applies a candy tax to confections made without flour, but also in Chicago, soda in a can is taxed at a 3% rate but the syrup for fountain soda is taxed at 9%.
- Breakfast cereal: In Canada, breakfast cereal makers are exempt from tax if the cereal contains a free children’s toy … but only if the toy is not “beer, liquor, or wine.” Seems pretty easy to meet that requirement.
- Robots: South Korea has reduced a tax break for companies that have invested in automation that replaces human jobs with machines.
- Unhealthy food: Mexico, Hungary, and India all have junk food taxes that are in place to try to curb unhealthy eating habits.
- Cow flatulence: Ireland, Denmark, and other EU nations tax cattle owners on cow flatulence, due to it being one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gases.
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