these are almost entirely odd enforcement issues. I'm sure you can find parallels in the US since:the US has Tax laws about the giving of gifts, a few US states have actually imposed taxes on live adult entertainment in addition to all that cash which strippers neglect to document, municipalities give tax exemptions to movie shoots and help pay for sport stadiums, and I'm pretty sure you could deduct part of your tuition if you went to study witches here in the US.

I guess the real lesson here is that the maxim "The power to tax involves the power to destroy," is the same in the rest of the world as it is here.

A total of 18 states now charge what's commonly called a "jock tax" to make money off pro athletes visiting their teams. In Tennessee this tax is different from the other 17 because the visitors cannot get any relief through a deduction when filing taxes back home because the tax isn’t based on earnings. Tennessee, which does not have a state income tax uses what it calls a "privilege" tax. In some cases, athletes visiting Tennessee will be paying more money in taxes than they will earn for playing in games….a tax of more than 100%

In the US, the Mossberg 500 shotgun is available in several styles. Some ship from the factory with a pistol grip attached & a full buttstock loose in the box, others ship with the full buttstock attached & the pistol grip loose in the box. If one wants to modify the barrel of these shotguns to a length under 18 inches, one pays a different tax rate depending on the style. When one puts a short barrel onto the firearm that ships with the full buttstock attached, under US law, one has created an "SBS" (short-barreled shotgun) that must be registered with the BATFE and a tax-stamp purchased for $200.00 per year. If, however, one puts a short barrel onto the firearm that ships with the pistol grip attached, under US law, one has created an "AOW" (any other weapon) that must be registered with the BATFE and a tax-stamp purchased for $5.00 per year. A difference of $195.00 per year determined by the purely cosmetic detail of which piece of plastic is used to hold the shotgun. Lets not forget the US telephone excise tax, levied in 1898 to pay for the Spanish-American War. The war lasted 110 days (April 25 – August 12), the tax was collected for 108 years (1898-2006).

Yeah... In the US, when marijuana was effectively outlawed by the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 (sic) the government used a similar tactic. To purchase a tax-stamp for the cultivation of hemp, one had to have a crop of hemp in hand. The farmers that showed up with samples of their crop in hand to purchase their tax-stamps were promptly arrested for possessing hemp without a tax-stamp. Thanks to Mr. Harry Anslinger (head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, precursor to the DEA) and his testimony that cannabis use caused "murder, insanity and death" & (my favorite) "If Frankenstein's monster encountered the demon marihuana, he would drop dead of fright."