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A '''poll tax''' is a
tax of a uniform, fixed amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income). Such taxes were important sources of revenue for many countries into the 19th century, but this is no longer the case. There are several famous cases of poll taxes in history, notably a tax formerly required for voting in parts of the United States that was often designed to
disenfranchise African Americans, as well as two taxes levied by
John of Gaunt and
Margaret Thatcher in the fourteenth and twentieth centuries respectively.
The word ''
poll'' is an English word that once meant "head", hence the name ''poll tax'' for a per-person tax. However, in the
United States, the term has come to be used almost exclusively for a fixed (poll) tax applied to voting. Since "going to the polls" is a common idiom for voting (deriving, of course, from the fact that early voting involved head-counts), a new
folk etymology has supplanted any knowledge of the phrase's true origins in America.
==United States==
In the United States, the poll tax was a tax to be paid before one could vote. After the right to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the
Fifteenth Amendment, many Southern states enacted poll tax laws which often included a
grandfather clause that allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted to vote without paying the tax. These laws, though not expressly mentioning race, achieved the desired effect of disenfranchising African Americans.
The
Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the use of this tax as a pre-condition in voting in Federal elections. A 1966
Supreme Court decision held that the poll tax as applied to state elections violated the
equal protection clause of United States Constitution.
==United Kingdom==
John of Gaunt, the regent of
Richard II of England, levied his poll tax in
1380 to finance the war against
France that was in progress.
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.
In
1985, Margaret Thatcher,
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from
1979 to
1990, decided to act upon a long standing aspiration to replace the
rating system of local taxes (based on the notional rental value of a house). The proposed replacement that emerged from consultations within the Department of the Environment, primarily between Lord Rothschild,
William Waldegrave and
Kenneth Baker, and which secured Mrs Thatcher's strong support, was for a Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was an exemption for low-income people.
This proposal was contained in the
Conservative Manifesto for the
1987 General Election. The legislation introducing the Community Charge was passed in
1988 and the new tax replaced the rates in
Scotland from the start of the
1989/90 financial year and in
England and
Wales from the start of the
1990/91 financial year. That the tax was introduced in Scotland a year before the rest of the UK was another fatal political mistake for Thatcher - the already low support of her policies north of the border turned into even greater apathy, and planted seeds of distrust towards the Tories within the Scottish people which continues to haunt the Conservative Party to the present day.
It was thought to be unfair as the tax burden shifted from the estimated price of a house to the number of people living in it, with the perceived effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. It did not help that Margaret Thatcher chose to champion the Community Charge herself and apparently chose to be both ruthless in imposing it and adamant that there would be no "U-turns" (reversals in policy).
The charge was bitterly opposed and people sought to protest through mass protests and through not paying it so they would be prosecuted in a manner close to
Gandhi's
Passive Resistance.
However as the charges began to rise, and enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, unrest mounted and culminated in a number of
riots. The most serious of these happened in London on
March 31 1990, and started during a protest at
Trafalgar Square,
London, which 300,000 protestors had attended (see also
Poll tax riot).
Politicians of the governing Conservative Party came to the conclusion that their party was doomed to electoral defeat if the tax remained and that there was no prospect of its abandonment while Mrs Thatcher remained leader. This resulted in the success of a leadership challenge by
Michael Heseltine in demonstrating the untenability of her position (although in the actual vote of MPs Thatcher prevailed by a margin of 50 votes out of 370). On
November 22 1990 Mrs Thatcher resigned and all three contenders to succeed her pledged to abandon the tax.
The successful candidate,
John Major, appointed his defeated rival Michael Heseltine to the post of Environment Secretary responsible for replacing the Community Charge. By the time of the
1992 General Election, legislation had been passed replacing Community Charge with the
Council Tax from the start of the
1993/94 financial year.
The
Council Tax strongly resembled the rating system that the Poll Tax had replaced. The main differences were that it was levied on capital value rather than notional rental value of a property, and that a 25% discount for single occupancy dwellings was introduced.
==External links==
*
Pictures by Paul Ross who witnessed the riot.
*
The Battle that brought down Thatcher - A far-left perspective by the
Militant Tendencyde:Pauschalsteuer
