Hearth tax

Okay kiddo, have you ever heard of a hearth? It's like a fireplace or stove where you can make a cozy fire to keep warm.

In the old days, people used to live in houses that had multiple rooms and each room had its own hearth. In order to make sure everyone was paying their fair share of taxes to the government, they came up with something called a hearth tax.

Basically, the government would send people around to count how many hearths each house had. Then, they would charge the people who lived in the house a certain amount of money for each hearth they had.

So, let's say you lived in a house with three rooms and each room had a fireplace. The government would charge you three times the amount of money that someone with just one hearth had to pay.

This tax helped the government make money and it also made sure that everyone was paying their fair share. But, it wasn't always popular with the people who had to pay it, because they might feel like they were being charged too much.