When Alistair Darling delivered his report to a restive Commons yesterday he might have taken comfort from Edmund Burke who, in a eulogy to a previous chancellor, said: “To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”

Given that the man about whom he was talking was Charles Townshend, the Chancellor whose taxes on the import into America of goods such as glass, paper and tea were to lead – long after the unfortunate Townshend’s early death – to the eventual loss of the American colonies, the remarks are more significant than even Burke could have realised at the time.

He was right, of course: taxes have always been with us, have never been popular – and have, ever since they were introduced by the Ancient Egyptians about 5,000 years ago, inspired people to find ever more imaginative ways of avoiding them. When the Egyptians introduced a tax on cooking oil the taxmen, or scribes, had to check that all households were using proper, taxed oil to cook with and not replacing it with some untaxed substitute.

After the Egyptians there was no turning back, although at least the Greeks had the decency, after waging a war supported by a special tax called an eisphora, to use any profit made during the war to refund the tax afterwards. The Romans were keen on tax, too, with that great taxman Julius Caesar introducing the first federal tax system with a 1 per cent sales tax. For every great taxman there is a great tax avoider, however, and when a substantial land tax was introduced from which cemeteries and mausoleums were exempt, the poet Virgil invited senators and friends to a funeral on his estate. It was to bury his – much missed – pet housefly, but it was enough to have the land classified as a cemetery, and to save Virgil from a big tax bill.

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Over the years anything, and everything, has been taxed. The Emperor Vespasian taxed public urinals; under Charles II England introduced a hearth tax. That was replaced in 1696 by a window tax that was supposed to pay for the wars being waged at the time but was not repealed until 1851.

Income tax was also not supposed to last. Introduced in 1799 to pay for the Napoleonic wars, it was repealed the year after Waterloo to much public rejoicing. In 1842 Sir Robert Peel brought it back again, and despite everyone’s best efforts - both Disraeli and Gladstone promised to repeal it – there it stayed.

That, perhaps, is the inescapable nature of taxation. But why does the tax year start on April 6? Fittingly enough, it is all down to Julius Caesar. When, in 1752, Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the country lost 11 days. London’s tax authorities and landlords were furious that in taxes falling due as usual on Lady Day – March 25 – they would have revenue for 354 days, not 365. The Treasury caved in and moved the tax date back by 11 days, to April 5.

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