After World War I, the Senate represented Iraq’s landholding class, ensuring passage of the 1933 “Law Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators” to regulate landlord‑tenant relations; after World War II, however, the legislature’s lower house resisted the Senate with regard to the question of taxation. How were the country’s new petroleum revenues to be disbursed? If these were directed to the national income, then they would become subject to the Constitutionally‑ordained parliamentary process which governed passage of the national budget; if, however, they were directed to the Development Board, their expenditure would remain (unaccountably) in the hands of the Cabinet members who had negotiated the new agreement with the petroleum companies. This discussion contextualizes petroleum’s role in Iraq’s tax system during the Hashemite monarchy, via Poland. There, taxation of Cepelia disadvantaged private contractors; after 1956, the folk art industries cooperative’s salary structure was revised, it reopened its own stores and took control of its own warehouses, and enjoyed a change in its tax status.