In an ongoing desperate effort to determine me to get married, sooner rather than later, Grandma remembered there used to be a tax on celibacy, back in the good old days.
I looked into it. It's true.
People aged over 25 years old who were not married had to pay for the privilege. Furthermore, people over 30 who were married but had no children had to pay even more. I haven't been able to get accurate information but it seems the tax did not exceed 5% of gross income.
I found a fairly interesting debate about the topic on Ioan T. Morar's Blog.
Somewhere in the first few comments you'll find a joke from those days made in the form of a rhyming signed request to be exempt from the tax which reads (Romanian only):
Cerere:
Subsemnatul Ion Pendula,
Om al muncii fara p…..a,
Cer sa nu platesc tribut,
Fiindca eu nu pot ca sa f….t".
Si, imediat, primi si raspunsul:
"Cetatean Ion Pendula,
Om al muncii fara p….a,
Cat exista deget, limba,
Legea tarii nu se schimba.
The little "poem" is very typical for Romanian humour in communist times. Unfortunately the whole thing translates very poorly into English.
I'm not even going to bother to go into the complex task of expressing an opinion on the tax itself. Let's just say social policies from Romania, from any period, make for some really interesting reading.
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