Let’s go back to 1623, 400 years in the past.
The Twelve Years’ Truce expired in 1621 and the country is again at war.
Let’s go back to 1623, 400 years in the past. The Twelve Years’ Truce expired in 1621 and the country is again at war. The Spanish have besieged and taken Bergen op Zoom, Steenbergen has fallen and enemy troops are at the borders. The young Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands is struggling. Defence spending suffered serious cutbacks during the truce. Although all taxes have been increased, there is still not enough money coming in to meet defence expenses. The search for new taxes is on.
And then, on 24 April 1623, a letter arrived at the States General with an idea for a new tax that the people would not find objectionable. Of course, that was music to our ears! And tax stamps were born. Initially, tax stamps were mandatory to make all kinds of deeds and other important papers valid. Then they spread around the world at lightning speed and were used on numerous other items like newspapers, luxury products, hair powder, tobacco, playing cards, alcoholic beverages, sugar, salt and so on almost endlessly.
400 years later, we can still find tax stamps in the Netherlands, mainly in the form of excise duty stamps on tobacco products. By the way, most tax stamps in the Netherlands had been abolished by 1971.
But such stamps are still used worldwide, for example in Suriname and Indonesia. And not only on tobacco and alcohol products but also in the ‘old’ way on deeds and other important papers.
The significance of the Dutch invention of the tax stamp cannot be underestimated. It is a means or tool of taxation that has been used worldwide for 400 years without interruption
Developments continue to this day, for example in India where tax stamps are provided with holograms to protect against forgery.
The significance of the Dutch invention of the tax stamp cannot be underestimated. It is a means or tool of taxation that has been used worldwide for 400 years without interruption – that’s an anniversary worth celebrating!
