History of The English Fiscal System - Poll Tax

Poll Tax

A poll tax (head tax or capitation tax, per U.S. English usage) is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount applied to an individual in accordance with the census (as opposed to a percentage of income). When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax (and vice versa, if a poll tax obligation can be worked off). Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century. There have been several famous (and infamous) cases of head taxes in history, notably a tax formerly required for voting in parts of the United States that was often designed to disenfranchise poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and white people of non-English descent (e.g., the Irish). In the United Kingdom, poll taxes were levied by the governments of John of Gaunt in the 14th C., Charles II in the 17th and Margaret Thatcher in the 20th century. The word poll is an English word that once meant "head" - and still does, in some specialised contexts - hence the name poll tax for a per-person tax. In the United States, however, 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. Akin to the above - at any rate in its nature as a direct impost - was the poll or capitation tax. Financial pressure at the close of Edward IIIs reign (1377) led to the adoption of a tax of fourpence per head on all persons in the kingdom (mendicants and persons under fourteen years being excepted). This "tallage of groats", which seems to be derived by analogy from the hearth money for Peter's Pence, was followed by the graduated poll taxes of 1379 and 1380, the former ranging in scale from ten marks (£6 13s. 4d.) imposed on royal dukes and viscounts, to six marks on earls, bishops and abbots down to three on barons and to the groat or fourpence on all other persons over sixteen years of age.

As Adam Smith saw it, this accorded to a form of income tax. In the event, it proved to be unproductive, only half the estimated yield of £50,000 being obtained. Indeed, the tax of 1380 varied within narrower limits - from twenty shillings to fourpence (or sixty groats to three), with the proviso that the strong should aid the weak. However, this particular tax is chiefly memorable as the occasion that may have been the real causes of the great Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

This unlucky association sealed the fate of the poll tax as a fiscal expedient. It was abandoned, with one exception, for nearly three hundred years, its occasional employment in the 17th century not resulting in its permanent revival. Apart from special circumstances, it is plain that the tenth and fifteenth was better suited than the poll tax for the purpose of English finance.

The machinery for collection was ready for the former, while special agents had to gather the latter, even from the poorest classes. In fact, the episode of the poll taxes may be regarded as a fortunately unsuccessful attempt to relieve the propertied classes at the expense of the peasants and poorer burghers. Failure in this respect helped in the maintenance of the settlement of direct taxation devised in 1334.

In U.S. practice, a poll tax was used as a de facto or implicit pre-condition of the exercise of the ability to vote. This tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow laws. After the ability to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment, many Southern states enacted poll tax laws as a means of restricting eligible voters; such laws often included a grandfather clause, which allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax. These laws, along with unfairly implemented literacy tests and extra-legal intimidation, achieved the desired effect of disfranchising African-American and Native American voters, as well as poor whites. Initially, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937), found the poll tax to be constitutional. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, reflecting a political compromise, abolished the use of the poll tax (or any other tax) as a pre-condition for voting in Federal elections, but made no mention of poll taxes in state elections. In the 1966 case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, the Supreme Court overruled its decision in Breedlove v. Suttles, and extended the prohibition of poll taxes to state elections. It declared that the imposition of a poll tax in state elections violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Harper ruling was one of several that rely on the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment rather than the more direct provision of the 15th Amendment. In a two-month period in the spring of 1966, Federal courts declared unconstitutional poll tax laws in the last four states to have them, starting with Texas on 9 February. Decisions followed for Alabama (3 March) and Virginia (25 March). Mississippi's $2.00 poll tax (equal to $14.33 today) was the last to fall, declared unconstitutional on 8 April 1966, by a Federal panel in Jackson, Mississippi. Virginia attempted to partially abolish its poll tax by requiring a residence certification, but the Supreme Court did not accept this.

a capital tax levied equally on every adult in the community. Although no longer a significant source of revenue for any major country, the poll tax did provide large sums for many governments until well into the 1800s. The tax has long been attacked as being an unfair burden upon those less able to pay. In the United States, 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. By the 1940s some of these taxes had been abolished, and in 1964 the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disallowed the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in federal elections. In 1966 this prohibition was extended to all elections by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that such a tax violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. In 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain introduced a poll tax with exemptions for people with low incomes or disabilities. The measure was extremely unpopular and played a role in her replacement as prime minister later that year.

The term “poll tax” is used in two senses. In most of the world, a poll tax is a flat tax levied on every citizen of a region for the purpose of raising money for the government. In the United States, the term is used specifically to refer to a sum of money which people were required to pay in order to go to the polls to vote. Both reference “poll” as in “to count,” a word derived from “poll” in the sense of “human head.” The poll tax in the second sense was abolished in 1964 under the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The history of the poll tax in the first sense is ancient, as is the history of opposition to the poll tax. Poll taxes were used in many European nations and European colonies (including America) to raise money to pay for government programs. Sometimes, the citizens fought back, as in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in England, which was triggered by a poll tax. An attempt to reinstate the poll tax in 1990 in Britain also led to rioting.