Poll Tax

6 Key excerpts on "Poll Tax"

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  Studies in the History of Tax Law, Volume 4

  • John Tiley(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  6 The Poll Taxes in later Seventeenth Century England THE Poll TaxES IN LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND JEREMY SIMS JEREMY SIMS There is nothing can make it better apparent how displeasing Poll-Money is to the People, than the Observation how ill it is brought in, and answered to the King. For where Taxes seem hard and oppressive, in particular to the Poor, the Country Gentlemen proceed in the Levying of them with no Zeal nor Affec-tion.’ 1 As the name implies, a ‘Poll Tax’ was a head tax, payable either at a fixed rate or at a rate variable according to the rank or office of the tax payer. The first Poll Tax was imposed in England in 1222, being an ‘Aid for the King of Jerusalem’, 2 but it was over 150 years later, in the late fourteenth century, that the more famous Poll Taxes were imposed. In popular belief, these Poll Taxes of 1377–80, having been responsible for the Peasants’ Revolt, had then been consigned to history. The reality is that Poll Taxes continued to be imposed by English governments strapped for cash throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were deeply unpopular—even more so than most impositions—since they bore more heavily upon some of the poorer members of society, and they were mistrusted also perhaps because of their association with the Peasants’ Revolt. They were exacted three times in the fifteenth century and again as components of subsidies in 1512–24. In the seventeenth century, resort to the Poll Tax became more frequent. A poll was raised in 1641 3 and another in 1660 4 , in both cases for ‘the speedy provision of money’ to disband an army; in 1667, 5 to help pay for the Second Dutch War—which, in fact, had ended before the tax could be collected; and in 1678, 6 to raise money for a 1 C Davenant, An Essay upon Ways and Means of Supplying the War , 2nd edn (London, 1695). 2 M Jurkowski, CL Smith and D Crook, PRO Handbook, No 31. Lay Taxes in England and Wales, 1188–1688 (Kew, PRO, 1998) xxxiv.

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  To Make Another World

  Studies in Protest and Collective Action

  • Colin Barker, Paul Kennedy(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The Poll Tax was proposed by the 1987 Thatcher government as a new form of local tax to replace the rates. The Poll Tax, or community charge to give it its official name, was a flat rate tax on individual adults. The only concession to the ability to pay was that those on social security benefits, etc. only had to pay a proportion of the standard tax. However, this still meant for many individuals with little or no income that they had to pay local taxes for the first time, and at the same level as those on high incomes. Not surprisingly, with the benefit of hindsight perhaps, the Poll Tax was actively opposed by millions of people.

  In this chapter I shall examine in some detail the underlying moral response to the Poll Tax that contributed to generating the massive participation in the movement. I shall attempt this through an examination of the political morality of the activists in particular, and through their accounts, that of the participants. The interviews with activists that I draw upon below, were carried out in Leeds in 1990, and further details of these have been published elsewhere (Bagguley, 1995a).1 Furthermore, much of my argument will go against the grain of many contemporary accounts of class and politics in contemporary societies such as Britain. Briefly, such accounts often suggest that class is no longer a major political issue, that class-based inequalities no longer inform and motivate political action. Often it is asserted on the basis of rather flimsy evidence that class movements have been replaced by ‘new social movements’, or that consumption now has some kind of priority over production as a politically structuring set of social relations (see for instance Bauman, 1987; Lash and Urry, 1994).

  In contrast to some of what is argued in this literature, I find myself in closer affinity with the more empirical Weberian tradition of British sociology, which continually demonstrates the salience of class for voting behaviour and social identities among the working class in Britain (Goldthorpe and Marshall, 1994; Marshall et al 1988). Although largely associated with the Weberian tradition in British sociology the broad concept of ‘informed fatalism’ also has roots within the Marxian tradition (Abercrombie et al, 1980, pp.165-6). From this kind of analysis I want to develop the idea of ‘informed fatalism’, where working class protest does not routinely occur due to the perceived immutability of capitalist social relations. This helps to explain the lack of protest prior to, and after the Poll Tax.

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  Can't Pay, Won't Pay

  The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax

  • Simon Hannah(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Pluto Press

    (Publisher)

  For the left there was a very simple line of argument, as described by Michael Lavalette and Gerry Mooney: ‘The Poll Tax was a clear piece of class legislation. By treating all adults over the age of 18 as equals it attempted to reinforce the vast social and economic inequalities of wealth and power in society. The effect was to increase further the burden of paying for local welfare services on to the working class and to undermine any notion that tax should be related to income, wealth and ability to pay.’ 29 Labour MP and Militant supporter Dave Nellist described it simply as ‘Robin Hood in reverse – a wealth transfusion from the poor to the rich.’ 30 Tory MP William Waldegrave admitted later that ‘it was impossible to argue against the widespread impression of a huge shift to the better off, because it was true’. 31 Other opponents pointed to a central, humanist ethical consideration: you could tax property, profit, purchases and possessions, but you could not tax people. Then there was the mechanics of the proposed tax itself. The joint and several liability of couples was also challenged by campaigners: What if a woman was living with a man after divorcing? What if there was domestic violence or controlling behaviour? How would the council determine who counted as co-habiting ‘couples’? Would estates be filled with sex snoopers to see if people were copulating on a regular basis? Jo Richardson MP made a strong feminist case against the tax: ‘women, who are almost half the labour force, still earn less than three quarters of men’s average pay. The government’s refusal to take account of ability to pay the flat rate Poll Tax is blatant discrimination against women.’ 32 There was also serious concern for the plight of carers, the majority of whom were women. At the time there were 6 million people caring for those with disabilities or the elderly in their own homes

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  Information and Empire

  • (Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Open Book Publishers

    (Publisher)

  I chose the Poll Tax as a case study because it was a key direct tax in Russia, the revenue of which supplied military forces in peacetime. When Peter the Great introduced the new tax, he tried to organise it for ease of calculation and collection. The taxable base did not change for decades. Money collection and distribution were decentralised, so the cash flows never accumulated in the centre; instead they were directed according to the authorities’ orders right to their destination points. This configuration solved the most important logistical problem: money delivery to the consumer. The government obtained information on tax revenues and expenditures only from reports. The Poll Tax collection chain may therefore be split into two relatively connected procedures: the first, money gathering, distribution and delivery (the material layer ); and the second, making reports on cash inflows and outflows (the information layer ). The same officialdom—provincial, regional and local clerks—was in charge of both layers. 10 Was There a Required Number of Civil Servants for Tax Collection? Starting from the 1730s, Poll Tax collection was undertaken in provincial clerical offices where the taxpayers (landlords, countermen, delegated representatives, etc.) arrived twice a year (originally three times a year) and handed cash to a clerk (e.g. a copyist) who made an entry on the tax payment in one or several accounting books; within three days a taxpayer had to receive a receipt from the clerk confirming his payment. Other officials, enumerators ( shchetchiki ), under the supervision of a poll 10 The idea of a distinct informational part of Poll Tax collection has been expressed before; see Le Donne, Absolutism and the Ruling Class , p. 243: “Fiscal management consists of three distinct operations: collecting revenue, depositing it in a treasury from which it can be disbursed, and auditing both the revenue and the expenditures.

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  Available until 23 Apr |Learn more

  Of Cabbages and Kings: The History of Allotments

  • Caroline Foley(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Frances Lincoln

    (Publisher)

  In 1379 a further incursion into French territory was already being planned. Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard’s new lord chancellor, asked Parliament for £160,000 – a staggering sum of money in the fourteenth century. The English army, he argued, was stranded, unable to pay wages and in danger of a humiliating defeat by France. As a result, Parliament imposed a third Poll Tax in 1380. At a shilling a head for every person between fifteen and sixty years old, it was three times higher than the Poll Tax of 1377 and fell heavily on those who were the least able to pay. The treasurer, Thomas Brantingham, Bishop of Exeter, resigned (or was perhaps dismissed) and was replaced by Sir Robert Hales.

  Tax evasion

  The immediate response to the tax was evasion. There was a dramatic drop in the number of names recorded in the official rolls – a discrepancy of nearly 460,000 between the first Poll Tax of 1377 and the final one of 1380. Collusion between tax inspectors and villagers was suspected. As a result, special commissioners were appointed to verify the situation, and it was reported that 13,000 suppressed names were collected in Suffolk alone in a matter of weeks. The bullying tactics and gross behaviour of the commissioners stirred up hatred. So much anger was brewing that the tax collectors of London and Middlesex refused to carry out a third census, saying that it was too dangerous.

  Although the causes of the Peasants’ Revolt were varied – perhaps even influenced by the peasants’ uprising in northern France, the brutally suppressed Jacquerie of 1358 – contemporary chroniclers were agreed that it was the third Poll Tax, along with the insulting behaviour of the commissioners who collected it, that proved to be the breaking point. As the Evesham chronicler recorded: ‘This enaction was the cause of the unheard-of evil which followed.’ The common people did not trust the courtiers who were advising the young King Richard. Most despised of all were John of Gaunt, Simon Sudbury and the newly appointed treasurer, Sir Robert Hales – all allegedly getting rich on their hefty taxes.

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  Taxation in Britain since 1660

  • R. Douglas(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  15 Overview In 1660, £1.2 million of public money was promised for the needs of Charles II. Budgets of the late 1990s contemplate taxation receipts far in excess of £200,000 million. When the widest possible allowances are made for population growth, for the larger size of the realm and for infla- tion, the taxation burden per head has increased by a factor of far more than 100. The change has not been regular throughout the period; there have been long periods of relative stability, interspersed with periods of frenetic taxation growth. Just as there have been vast changes in the total amount of taxation, so also have there been great changes in the purposes for which taxes have been collected, and the items which have been taxed. At the time of the Restoration, just as today, taxes were levied to pay for items which most people agreed were necessary, but which, by the nature of things, the citizen could not – or would not – discharge for himself. A merchant could not adequately protect his own ships from attack and required help from the King’s ships to achieve that protection. Parishioners were unlikely to provide adequate money for relief of poverty or for the con- struction of roads and bridges through acts of private and voluntary char- ity, and so a system of local rating was required. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, most taxes (though customs duties were an important exception here) were not perceived as burdens which the citizen must go on bearing for the whole foreseeable future, but rather as devices which were called into being from time to time to meet some special need. Rates were levied as and when there were paupers to support, or public works to be undertaken. ‘Aids’, Poll Taxes and hearth taxes were demanded as and when required. The idea that taxes should be linked with specific items of expenditure has persisted into the twentieth century.

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