"Taxman" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. Written by the group's lead guitarist, George Harrison, with some lyrical assistance from John Lennon, it protests against the higher level of progressive tax imposed in the United Kingdom by the Labour government of Harold Wilson, which saw the Beatles paying over 90 per cent of their earnings to the Treasury. The song was selected as the album's opening track and contributed to Harrison's emergence as a songwriter beside the dominant Lennon–McCartney partnership. It was the group's first topical song and the first political statement they had made in their music.
The Beatles began recording "Taxman" in April 1966, a month after Wilson's landslide win in the 1966 general election. Coinciding with the song's creation, Harrison learned that the band members' tax obligations were likely to lead to their bankruptcy, and he was outspoken in his opposition to the government using their income to help fund the manufacture of military weapons. Drawing on 1960s soul/R&B musical influences, the song portrays the taxman as relentless in his pursuit of revenue and name-checks Wilson and Edward Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party. The recording includes an Indian-influenced guitar solo performed by Paul McCartney.
"Taxman" was influential in the development of British psychedelia and mod-style pop, and has been recognised as a precursor to punk rock. The Jam borrowed heavily from the song for their 1980 hit single "Start!" When performing "Taxman" on tour in the early 1990s, Harrison adapted the lyrics to reference contemporaneous leaders, citing its enduring quality beyond the 1960s. The song's impact has extended to the tax industry and into political discourse on taxation.
Background and inspiration
George Harrison wrote "Taxman" at a time when the Beatles discovered they were in a financially precarious position. In April 1966, a report from the London accountancy firm Bryce, Hammer, Isherwood & Co. advised them that despite the group's immense success, "Two of you are close to being bankrupt, and the other two could soon be." In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison says: Taxman' was when I first realised that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes; it was and still is typical." As their earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the Beatles were liable to a 95 per cent supertax introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour government; hence the lyric "There's one for you, nineteen for me".
John Lennon helped Harrison complete the song's lyrics. Lennon recalled in 1980: "I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul [McCartney], because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period." Lennon said he was reluctant to agree to Harrison's request, since it was "enough to do my own and Paul's [songs]", but he did so "because I loved him and didn't want to hurt his feelings".
Aside from the financial imposition, "Taxman" was informed by Harrison's consternation that the vast sums the Beatles paid in tax were being used to fund the manufacture of military weapons. Harrison voiced this concern in his "How a Beatle Lives" interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, in late February, in addition to railing against all forms of authority and speaking out against the Vietnam War. He likened Wilson to the Robin Hood character the Sheriff of Nottingham.
The song includes references to "Mr Wilson" and "Mr Heath", the latter being Ted Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party. In June 1965, during his first term as prime minister, Wilson had nominated the four Beatles as Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBEs). An unprecedented award for pop musicians, the MBEs recognised the group's sizeable contribution to the national economy, as their international breakthrough in 1964 created an export market for British pop for the first time. The band's international success also benefited the country's tourism and fashion industries, and entertainment generally; the surge in exports revenue extended to film and other commercial artistic pursuits, and by early 1966, recognition of London as the "Swinging City" of international culture. According to author Ian MacDonald in his discussion of "Taxman", the substantial tax the Beatles paid to Britain's Treasury was the "price" they paid for their MBEs.
When Harrison published his autobiography in 1980, Lennon was deeply hurt by the minimal coverage afforded him in the book. Responding to this in a 1987 interview, Harrison said: "He was annoyed 'cos I didn't say he'd written one line of the song 'Taxman'. But I also didn't say how I wrote two lines of 'Come Together' or three lines of 'Eleanor Rigby', you know – I wasn't getting into any of that."
Critical reception
Writing in The Village Voice, Richard Goldstein described Revolver as "revolutionary" and the Beatles' "great leap forward", and highlighted "Taxman" as "the album's example of political cheek, in which George enumerates Britain's current economic woes". He added that by naming both Wilson and Heath as "the villains", the Beatles "lay it right on the non-partisan line". In their joint album review in Record Mirror, Richard Green characterised the track as "Big beat rock 'n' roll", adding, "I liked it. Good idea", while Peter Jones found it "[a] bit repetitive" but "Loved the wild, strident guitar mid-way". KRLA Beats reviewer said it was "One of the best and most commercial George Harrison compositions for some time", adding: "It is also one of the best, most concise satirical comments on British society and the current tax situation (not to mention our own!) to come along from anyone for some time." Paul Williams of Crawdaddy! found it succeeded as a humorous song unlike "Yellow Submarine" but that the Indian-style instrumental break was "out of place" unlike on "Love You To". He said that lines such as "Ha-ha, Mr Wilson" were "delightful" and dubbed the song "Batman goes protest".
Ian MacDonald writes that, while Harrison was "rightly praised" for his composition, "Taxman" benefited from the whole group's creativity. He highlights McCartney's bass part as "remarkable" and his guitar solo as "outstanding". Alex Petridis of The Guardian considers it "faintly mind-boggling" that the Beatles departed from their usual approach to album tracks by issuing "Yellow Submarine" as a single from Revolver, saying that "Taxman" was one of the songs that would have been more worthy.
"Taxman" was ranked 48th in Mojos list of "The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs", compiled in 2006 by a panel of critics and musicians. In his commentary for the magazine, singer Joe Brown cited the track as a "brilliant example" of how, just as Harrison's guitar playing was often crucial in Lennon and McCartney's compositions, he was never selfish in his musicianship but was instead motivated to "get the best for the song" each time. Brown added: "everyone [is] chipping in with guitar parts and harmonies... There's no fat at all on it. And, [it's] very funny." In 2018, the music staff of Time Out London ranked "Taxman" at number seven on their list of the best Beatles songs.
In 2015, the editors of Guitar World ranked "Taxman" at number three in their list of "The Beatles' 50 Greatest Guitar Moments". They praised the solo as "a stunningly sophisticated creation, drawn from an Indian-derived Dorian mode and featuring descending pull-offs that recall Jeff Beck's work on the Yardbirds' 'Shapes of Things'" and said that while McCartney had played lead guitar on some previous Beatles tracks, "Taxman" was when he "[came] into his own as a guitarist". In 2001, when VH1 chose Revolver as its all-time greatest rock 'n' roll album, "Taxman" was among the four tracks, along with "Eleanor Rigby", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Yellow Submarine", cited by Bill Flanagan to support the contention that "If pop music were destroyed tomorrow, we could re-create it from this album alone."
Legacy
In his book Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman highlights "Taxman" as an example of the Beatles' widespread influence on rock music's developments during the 1960s. He says that Harrison's guitar riff "runs like an unbroken thread through the development of English psychedelia" and is also present "as a trace element in many a mod-pop mutation". Writing in Rolling Stones Harrison commemorative book, in January 2002, Mikal Gilmore recognised his incorporation of dissonance in the melody to "Taxman" and "I Want to Tell You" as having been "revolutionary in popular music" in 1966. Gilmore considered this quality to be "perhaps more originally creative" than the avant-garde styling that Lennon and McCartney took from Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky and brought to the Beatles' work over the same period. Revolver has been recognised as having inspired new subgenres of music, anticipating punk rock in the case of "Taxman".