I believe I picked up somewhere that men who wore beards were forced to actually wear these IN their beard, for everyone to see and know they had paid the tax.

I could be wrong on that, however.

I am glad those laws do not exist now, as I have had a beard since I was in the 7th grade.

The beard tax was aimed primarily at the Boyars, the aristocrats of Russia.  In some form or another regulations against beards lasted until the 1860s.  One common misconception is that everybody was forbidden from wearing a beard, this is not true.  If you were a peasant, the great majority of the population, you were exempt.  Obviously things had relaxed after the 1860s because the last two Tsars, Aleksandr III and Nikolai II had beards.