Flash Fiction: The Tax

The plan made perfect sense to the king. He beamed during the Council meeting. “Who doesn’t have a bathroom sink?” he said, perfectly reasonably. “We’ll tax the size of the bowl!”

The king underestimated his subjects. It wasn’t the first time.

Home builders promised, “Small, space-saving sinks.”

One enterprising woman in the capitol won a kingdom-wide award for a four-inch-diameter bowl.

Homeowners took up hammers and saws. When the taxman came to assess their assets, he found broken and chipped sinks in the bathrooms. Each one was still functional, but the bathroom floors were covered in splatters of water and soap suds.