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Poll tax
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A poll tax, head tax, or capitation tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per 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). Such taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century, but not since.
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A poll tax, head tax, or capitation tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per 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). Such taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century, but not since. There have been several famous (and infamous) 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 poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and white people of non-British descent (i.e.the Irish). In the United Kingdom, such taxes were levied by John of Gaunt and Margaret Thatcher in the 14th and 20th 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 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.
United States
A poll tax (in the sense of capitation) plays a significant role in the history of taxation in the United States and the adoption of income tax as a significant source of government funding. However, the second meaning of poll tax, namely a tax to be paid as a prerequisite to voting, is more widely known in the US today. It was widely used in the South after the turn of the 20th century in combination with other measures to bar blacks and poor whites from voter registration and voting. Recent debate has arisen about whether requiring citizens to purchase a state identification card (to prevent voter fraud) acts as a poll tax and bars poor voters from voting. To help prevent this from happening the states of Georgia and Indiana are offering free identification cards for those who can demonstrate the need. However, the cost of traveling to a government office can be prohibitive for the homeless and the poorest of society. In addition, there may be costs in acquiring the documents needed for an identification card.
Capitation and Federal taxation
The capitation clause of Article I of the United States Constitution, reads "[n]o capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken." Capitation here means a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per taxpayer. Direct tax means a tax levied directly by the United States federal government on taxpayers, as opposed to a tax on events or transactions.
The United States government levied direct taxes from time to time during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It levied direct taxes on the owners of houses, land, slaves, and estates in the late 1790s, but cancelled the taxes in 1802.
An income tax is neither a poll tax nor a capitation, as the amount of tax will vary from person to person, depending on each person's income. Until a United States Supreme Court decision in 1895, all income taxes were deemed to be excises (i.e. indirect taxes). The Revenue Act of 1861 established the first income tax in the United States, to pay for the cost of the American Civil War. This income tax was abolished after the war, in 1872. Another income tax statute in 1894 was overturned in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. in 1895, where the Supreme Court held that income taxes on income from property, such as rent income, interest income, and dividend income (but not income taxes on income from wages, employment, etc.) were to be treated as direct taxes. Because the statute in question had not apportioned income taxes on income from property by population, the statute was ruled unconstitutional. Finally, ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913 made possible modern income taxes, by removing the requirement of apportionment with respect to income taxes.
The United States government does not levy capitation taxes today.
Tax on voting
A poll tax, in the sense of a discrimination tax which was a pre-condition of the exercise of the right to vote, emerged in some US states in the late 19th century. 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 in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax. These laws achieved the desired effect of disfranchising African-American and Native American voters as well as poor whites who immigrated after the year specified.
The United States government did not levy poll taxes which blocked access to voting rights. Partly this is because the national government earned its revenues from income tax and excise taxes rather than from capitation, which required apportionment among the states.
The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the use of this tax (or any other tax) as a pre-condition in voting in Federal elections. The 1966 Supreme Court case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections extended this explicit enactment as a matter of judicial interpretation of a more general provision, ruling that the imposition of a poll tax in state elections violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is one of several rulings that rely on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment rather than the more direct provision of the 15th. In a two-month period in the spring of 1966, the last four states to still charge a poll tax laws had those laws declared unconstitutional by Federal courts, starting with Texas on February 9. Decisions followed for Alabama (Mar. 3) and Virginia (Mar. 25). Mississippi's $2.00 poll tax was the last to fall, declared unconstitutional on April 8, 1966, by a Federal panel in Jackson, Miss.
United Kingdom
The poll tax was essentially a lay subsidy (a tax on the movable property of most of the population) to help fund war. It had first been levied in 1275 and continued, under different names, until the 17th century.
People were taxed a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods. That percentage varied from year to year and place to place, and which goods could be taxed differed between urban and rural locations.
Churchmen were exempt, as were the poor, workers in the Royal Mint, inhabitants of the Cinque Ports, tin workers in Cornwall and Devon, and those who lived in the Palatinate counties of Cheshire and Durham.
14th century
John of Gaunt, the regent of Richard II of England, levied a poll tax in 1377 to finance the war against France. This tax covered almost 60% of the population, far more than lay subsidies had earlier. It was levied three times, in 1377, 1379 and 1381. Each time the basis was slightly different.
In 1377, everyone over the age of 14 years who was not exempt had to pay a groat (4d) to the Crown. By 1379 that had been graded by social class, with the lower limit raised to 16, and 15 two years later. The levy in 1381 was particularly unpopular, as each person aged over 15 was required to pay the amount of one shilling, which was then a large amount. This provoked the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, due in part to attempts to restore feudal conditions in rural areas.
20th century: community charge
The Community Charge was a poll tax to fund local government in the United Kingdom, instituted in 1989 by the government of Margaret Thatcher. It replaced the rates that were based on the notional rental value of a house. The abolition of rates was in the manifesto of Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1979 general election, and the replacement was proposed in the Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government based on ideas developed by Dr Madsen Pirie and Douglas Mason of the Adam Smith Institute. It was a fixed tax per adult resident, but there was a reduction for poor people. Each person was to pay for the services provided in their community. This proposal was contained in the Conservative Manifesto for the 1987 General Election. 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.
The system was deeply unpopular. It seemed to shift the tax burden from rich to poor, as it was based on the number of people living in a house rather than its estimated price. Many tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than earlier predictions, leading to resentment even among people who had supported it. The tax in different boroughs differed dramatically because local taxes paid by businesses varied and grants by central government to local authorities sometimes varied capriciously.
There were mass protests, called by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation to which the vast majority of local Anti Poll Tax Unions (APTUs) were affiliated. In Scotland the APTUs called for mass non-payment and these calls rapidly gathered widespread support which spread to England and Wales, even though non-payment meant that people could be prosecuted. In some areas, 30% of former ratepayers defaulted. While owner-occupiers were easy to tax, those who regularly changed accommodation were almost impossible to pursue if they chose not to pay. The cost of collecting the tax rose steeply while the returns from it fell. Enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, and unrest grew and culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots. The most serious was in a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, on March 31 1990, of more than 200,000 protesters. A Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax.
This unrest was instrumental in toppling Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Her replacement, John Major, replaced the Community Charge with the Council Tax, similar to the rating system that preceded the Poll Tax. The main differences were that it was levied on capital value rather than notional rental value of a property, and that it had a 25% discount for single-occupancy dwellings.
Canada
The Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 stipulated that all Chinese entering Canada would be subjected to a head tax of $50. The act was mostly to discourage the lower class Chinese from entering, since Canada still welcomed the rich Chinese merchants who could afford the head tax. After the Government of Canada realized that the $50 fee did not effectively eliminate Chinese from entering Canada, the government passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1900 and 1903, increasing the tax to $100 and $500, respectively. In 1923, the government passed Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 which prohibited all Chinese from immigrating to Canada.
On June 22, 2006, the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper delivered a message of redress for a head tax once applied to Chinese immigrants. Survivors or their spouses will receive $20,000 CAD compensation.
New Zealand
The numbers of the Chinese immigration went from 20,000 a year to 8 people after the government imposed "head tax". New Zealand imposed a poll tax on Chinese immigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The poll tax was effectively lifted in the 1930s following the invasion of China by Japan, and was finally repealed in 1944. Prime Minister Helen Clark offered New Zealand's Chinese community an official apology for the poll tax on 12 February 2002.
See also
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