Poll tax
A poll tax, head tax is a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income). Raised thus per capita, it is sometimes called a capitation tax. Such taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times into the 19th century, but this is no longer the case.
The word poll is an English word that once meant "head," hence the name poll tax for a per-person tax. In the United States,on the other hand, the term has come to be used almost exclusively for a fixed tax applied to voting. Since "going to the polls" is a common idiom for voting (deriving from the fact that early voting involved head-counts), a new folk etymology has supplanted common knowledge of the phrase's true origins in America.
Poll taxes are regressive, since they take the same amount of money (and hence, a higher proportion of income) for poorer individuals as for richer individuals. They are also difficult to cheat.
Poll Tax historical overview
During the various reins of the Egyptian Pharaohs tax collectors were known as scribes. During one period the scribes imposed a tax on cooking oil. To insure that citizens were not avoiding the cooking oil tax, scribes would audit households to insure that appropriate amounts of cooking oil were consumed and that citizens were not using leavings generated by other cooking processes as a substitute for the taxed oil.
Poll taxes were originally levied on conquered people by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In times of war the Athenians imposed a tax referred to as eisphora. No one was exempt from the tax which was used to pay for special wartime expenditures. The ancient Greeks, however, were one of the few societies that were able to rescind the tax once the emergency was over.
Athenians imposed a monthly poll tax on foreigners, people who did not have both an Athenian Mother and Father, of one drachma for men and a half drachma for women. The tax was referred to as metoikion.
The earliest tax mentioned in the Bible of a half-shekel per annum from each adult Jew (Ex. 30:11-16) was a form of poll tax.
The money was raised by taxing individuals a fraction of the assessed value of the movable goods, that fraction varying from year to year (and often place to place). The goods that could be assessed varied between urban and rural areas.
In the 17th century this tax was an important source of revenue for financing wars with rival nations.
A notable poll tax was imposed on the entire male peasant population of Russia by Czar Peter the Great in 1718. One result of that tax was the institution of a CENSUS (q.v.) in order to provide a basis for financial calculations in connection with the tax and to aid in enforcement of the tax.
In fact, for a genealogist, the wonderful thing about the poll tax is that returns are given by name and place, and the relationship between taxpayers (wife, children, etc.) is often included. Poll tax payments covered almost 60% of the population, which is far more than the lay subsidies that came before it. That makes it, by far, the medieval document most likely to contain the name of anybody’s ancestors.
A brief Poll Tax history in England
In England a poll tax was first imposed in 1377 and was reimposed at intervals until 1698. The Poll Tax was actually one form of what was called a lay subsidy - a tax paid by all non-churchmen on movable property to help fund the army in times of war. The earliest lay subsidy - at least under that name - was raised in 1275, and after that they were levied at disturbingly regular intervals until the 17th century. For the most part, however, the returns are of little use to the genealogist ( as the contrary was mentioned in previous part ), since from 1332 onwards no individual names were recorded, only the totals for a village or town.
Although the poll tax was strictly a poll tax, and certainly envisaged that way at the time, it's viewed quite differently in retrospect, largely because it was a tax per head, rather than on goods. It was levied just three times, in 1377, 1379 and 1381. Each time the basis was slightly different.
In 1377, everyone over the age of 14 and not exempt had to pay a groat (2p) to the Crown. By 1379 that had been graded by social class, with the lower age limit raised to 16, (and 15 two years later).
The most famous poll-tax in English history is the one levied in 1380, which led to the revolt of the peasants under Wat Tyler in 1381, but the first instance of the kind was in 1377, when a tax of a groat a head was voted by both clergy and laity.
In 1379 the tax was again levied, but on a graduated scale. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, paid ten marks, and the scale descended from him to the peasants, who paid one groat each, every person over sixteen years of age being liable.
In 1380 the tax was also graduated, but less steeply. For some years after the rising of 1381 money was only raised in this way from aliens, but in 1513 a general poll tax was imposed. This, however, only produced about 50,000, instead of £160,000 as was expected, but a poll-tax levied in 1641 resulted in a revenue of about £400,600.
The levy in 1381 was particularly unpopular, as each person aged over 15 was required to pay the amount of one shilling, which was a large amount then. This provoked the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, due in part to attempts to restore feudal conditions in rural areas.
Obviously, the well-to-do paid more, but many others also ended up having to pay, although the poor were exempt - the minimum payment was usually 6d (2 ½ pence). In fact the list of exemptions is fascinating in its own right: not only churchmen, but also workers in the Royal Mint, inhabitants of the Cinque Ports, inhabitants of the Counties Palatine of Cheshire and Durham, and tin workers of the Cornish and Devon stannaries.
From 1524, when the method changed so that land was taxed at an annual value of 24% and goods at 28% in the pound (an eerie augur of modern taxation), names are listed until the lay subsidy was finally ended.
During the reign of Charles II. money was obtained in this way on several occasions, although, especially, in 1676-1677 there was a good deal of resentment against the tax. For some years after 1688 poll-taxes were a favourite means of raising money for the prosecution of the war with France.
Sometimes a single payment was asked for the year; at other times quarterly payments were required.
The poll-tax of 1697 included a weekly tax of one penny from all persons not receiving alms. In 1698 a quarterly poll-tax produced £321,397. Nothing was required from the poor, and those who were liable may be divided roughly into three classes:
- Persons worth less than boo paid one shilling;
- those worth boo, including the gentry and the professional classes, paid twenty shillings; while tradesmen and shopkeepers paid ten shillings; and
- non-jurors were charged double these rates.
Like previous poll-taxes, the tax of 1698 did not produce as much as was anticipated, and it was the last of its kind in England.
In the 20th century, the abolition of the rating system of taxes (based on the notional rental value of a house) to fund local government had been in the manifesto of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1979 general election.
The Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government, proposed the Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was a reduction for poor people.
Charged was each person for the services provided by their community ( i.e. council government). Due to the amount of local taxes paid by businesses varying, and the amount of grant provided by central government to individual local authorities sometimes varying widely, there were dramatic differences in the amount charged between boroughs.
A brief Poll Tax history in the U.S.
In the U.S., poll taxes were levied infrequently until after the American Civil War. They were then adopted by the southern states as a way of circumventing the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed former slaves the right to vote.
Thus, the poll tax has been connected with voting rights. Poll taxes enacted in Southern states between 1889 and 1910 had the effect of disenfranchising many blacks as well as poor whites, because payment of the tax was a prerequisite for voting.
For instance, with the annexation of Texas in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Tejanos—Texans of Mexican descent—lost property rights and political power in a society dominated by Anglos. Through discriminatory practices and violent force, Tejanos were kept at the bottom of the new political and socio-cultural order.
From 1900–1930, as an influx of immigrants from Mexico came north to meet a growing demand for cheap labor in the developing commercial agriculture industries, Tejanos experienced continued discrimination in employment, housing, public facilities, the judicial system, and educational institutions.
In addition, Texas joined the other former Confederate states in 1902, legislating a poll tax requirement that, with the implementation of all-white primaries in 1904, effectively disenfranchised African Americans and many Tejano citizens. The struggle of Mexican Americans to end discriminatory practices accelerated following World War II. By the 1940s some of these taxes had been abolished.
To speed-up repealing the tax, in 1948, an advocacy group was formed by Mexican American veterans. In 1949 and 1950, they began local “pay your poll tax” drives to register Tejano voters. Although they failed in repeated efforts to repeal the tax, a 1955–56 drive in the Rio Grande Valley resulted in the first majority Mexican American electorate in the area.
In 1960, they contributed to the future president’s narrow victory in Texas that helped win the national election.
Ratification of the 24th Amendment finally abolished the poll tax requirement for Federal elections in 1964. In 1966, the tax was eliminated in all state and local elections by a Supreme Court ruling, which ruled that such a tax violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
At ceremonies formalizing ratification of the 24th Amendment, in February 1964, President Lyndon Johnson noted that by abolishing the poll tax the American people:
“…...reaffirmed the simple but unbreakable theme of this Republic. Nothing is so valuable as liberty, and nothing is so necessary to liberty as the freedom to vote without bans or barriers…There can be no one too poor to vote……”
Political Problems with the Poll Tax
A poll tax had had two historical meanings. The older is that of a fee that had to be paid to satisfy taxpayer requirements in voting laws. In some places, only people who could demonstrate a financial tie to a community were permitted to vote in that community. For those who did not otherwise own property or pay taxes, this sort of poll tax was sufficient to allow voting.
More recently, however, a poll tax was a tax that must have beeen paid by anyone wishing to cast a vote. Poll taxes of this sort were generally low, perhaps a dollar or two, but high enough to make voting uneconomical for poor people.
Logically enough, some of the world more notorious riots, civil disobedience and almost civil wars are one way or the other connected with the enactment of poll taxes. Of course at stake was not just a “dollar or two,” but feeling:
- of either political disenfranchising --- as with the Mexican American veterans example mentioned above--- or
- that, economically, “enough is enough”.
There are several famous cases of poll taxes in history, notably a tax formerlyrequired for voting in parts of the United States that was often designed to disenfranchise African Americans, Native Americans, and whites of non-British descent, as well as two taxes levied by John of Gaunt and Margaret Thatcher in the fourteenth and twentieth centuries respectively.
In New Zealand, as economic conditions worsened, there was a growing animosity towards the incoming Chinese, and from 1881 measures were introduced to restrict further Chinese immigration. All Chinese entering New Zealand had to pay a poll tax. This was a classical receipt for a poll tax payment-cum-policy tool of excluding Chinese from New Zealand or, at least, stop the influx of Chinese immigrants to the country.
The Thatcher’s “Community Charge” in England
The Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government, proposed the Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was a reduction for poor people. This charged each person for the services provided by their community ( council; i.e. government ).
Due to the varying amount of local taxes paid by businesses and the amounts of grant provided by central government to individual local authorities sometimes varying wildly, there were dramatic differences in the amount charged between the boroughs.
Mrs. Thatcher decided to bring the local councils to heel by legislating the abolition of the local rates, and their replacement by an equal poll tax per adult, calling it by the euphemism, "community charge." At least on the local level, then, soaking the rich would have been replaced by an equal tax.
But the system was unpopular: Rather than being based on the estimated price of a house, it was now based on the number of people living in it, with the perceived effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor.
Therefore, many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than many earlier predictions, leading to a feeling of resentment even among many of those who had supported it. Enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, and unrest mounted and culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots.
"......The anti-government riots in London at the end of March were, it must be noted, anti-tax riots, and surely a movement in opposition to taxation can't be all bad. But wasn't the protest movement at bottom an envy-ridden call for soaking the rich, and hostility to the new Thatcher tax a protest against its abstention from egalitarian leveling?...... Not really. There is no question that the new Thatcher "community charge" was a bold and fascinating experiment....." (Rothbard, 1996, Ch. 62 ).
Local government councils, beeing, in many cases, havens of the left-wing Labour Party, have been engaging in runaway spending in the years preceding 1990. As in the case of American local governments, basic local revenue in great Britain has been derived from the property tax ("rates" in Britain) which are levied proportionately on the value of property.
But, whereas in the United States, conservative economists tend to hail proportionate taxation (especially on incomes) as ideal and "neutral" to the market, the then British ( i.e. Thatcher ) government have apparently understood the fallacy of this position.
“……On the market, people do not pay for goods and services in proportion to their incomes. David Rockefeller does not have to pay $1000 for a loaf of bread for which the rest of us pay $1.50. On the contrary, on the market there is a strong tendency for a good to be priced the same throughout the market; one good, one price…..It would be far more neutral to the market, indeed, for everyone to pay, not the same tax in proportion to his income, but the same tax as everyone else, period. Everyone's tax should therefore be equal. Furthermore, since democracy is based on the concept of one man or woman, one vote, it would seem no more than fitting to have a principle of one man, one tax……. Equal voting, equal taxation………” ( ibid, 1996 ).
Conclusion from the “Community Charge” in Britain
But there were several deep flaws in the new poll tax-cum-“community charge”:
- In the first place, it was still not neutral to the market, since—a crucial difference—market prices are paid voluntarily by the consumer purchasing the good or service, whereas the tax (or "charge") is levied coercively on each person, even if the value of the "service" of government to that person is far less than the charge, or is even negative. Also, a poll tax is a charge levied on a person's very existence, and the person must often be hunted down at great expense to be forced to pay the tax. Charging a man for his very existence seems to imply that the government owns all of its subjects, body and soul.
- The second deep flaw is bound up with the problem of coercion. It is certainly heroic of Mrs. Thatcher to want to scrap the property tax in behalf of an equal tax. But she seems to have missed the major point of the equal tax, one that gives it its unique charm. For the truly great thing about an equal tax is that in order to make it payable, it has to be drastically reduced from the levels before the equality is imposed ( ibid., 1996).
Assume, for example, that the present U.S. federal tax was suddenly shifted to become an equal tax for each person. This would mean that the average person, and particularly the low-income person, would suddenly find himself paying enormously more per year in taxes—about $5,000.
“…..So that the great charm of equal taxation is that it would necessarily force the government to lower drastically its levels of taxing and spending. Thus, if the U.S. government instituted, say, a universal and equal tax of $10 per year, confining it to the magnificent sum of $2 billion annually, we would all live quite well with the new tax, and no egalitarian would bother about protesting its failure to soak the rich. ….”( ibid.,1996 ).
In England, in contrast to the United States, the central government has control over the local governments, many of which are ruled by wild-spending left-leaning Labour party members of the local governments. The equal tax was thus designed to curb the free-spending local governments and use it as a club to force an enormous lowering of taxes.
Instead, what should have been predictable, happened. The “community” governments ( local councils ) generally increased their spending and taxes, the higher equal tax biting fiercely upon the poor and middle-class, and then effectively placed the blame for the higher taxes upon the Thatcher regime. Moreover, in all this maneuvering, the government forgot the main thing:
The great point about an equal tax is precisely that taxes have to be drastically lowered so that the poorest can pay them. To raise equal tax rates above the old property tax, or to allow them to be raised so that the average British citizen is being forced to pay approximately one-third more in local taxes, is a sure-fire recipe for political disaster.
Yet again, it becomes clear that a minimum criterion for a regime receiving the accolade of "pro-free-market" --- that, both, Britain under Thatcher and the U.S. under Reagan and some other subsequent governments had claimed --- would require it to cut total spending, cut overall tax rates, and revenues, and put a stop to its own inflationary creation of money. Even by this modest yardstick, no British or American administration ( let alone the European Union or any other administration in the world, for that matter ) in decades, have come close to qualifying.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Dowell, S., History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 1888, vol. iii.;
- Stubbs, W., Constitutional History,1896, vol. ii.
- Rothbard, Murray N., Making Economic Sense, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala. 1995, 435 pages.
- National Archives of New Zealand, Internal Affairs Department IA 1, 116/7; Part 1: Chinese - general question of naturalisation, July 1882
External links
- Middle Ages Poll Tax.
- Pictures by Paul Ross who witnessed the riot.
- The Battle that brought down Thatcher - a perspective by the Trotskyist Militant tendency.
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