This reminds me of import duty tariff codes: back in 2014 I was planning to purchase a recumbent tricycle, take it to America for a holiday, then return with it to Australia; and I investigated the duty tariffs, to seek to reassure myself that I wouldn’t be required to pay duty in either direction, and to see if I could get it GST-free via the Tourist Refund Scheme if I brought it back into the country a month later (don’t remember what I concluded on that point). (As written, I came away with the distinct impression that things like laptops, cameras, bicycles and phones, totalling anything over something like a thousand dollars are supposed to be taxed, with surprisingly limited exceptions; in practice, it’s definitely not so.)

Well, somewhere along the way I came across an item in the tables of things that hadn’t quite fit into their existing neat tariff categories: “bicycle with seven wheels and ten seats” (or perhaps it was ten wheels and seven seats); added in 1993, I think. The really funny thing with that is that the bike shop owner I subsequently bought the trike from was fairly confident he knew the vehicle in question. A slow vehicle, he opined, not very well-made.