Poll Tax
A poll tax (literally, a “per head” tax) is a tax of a certain amount of money, not a percentage, which is imposed on each individual within the tax authority’s jurisdiction within a specific class, for example, all retired males over the age of 65, without regard to the individual’s ownership of property. Although poll taxes played an important historical role as revenue generators, they have been outlawed and no longer exist today. At one point, a poll tax was required for all individuals to permit them to vote in certain parts of the United States and served to discriminate against certain individuals, such as African Americans, and to preclude them from voting.
Enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution extended voting rights to all races. Thereafter, certain southern states instituted poll taxes to prevent African Americans from voting. Grandfather clauses permitted particular individuals from voting if they had a father or grandfather who had voted before the abolition of slavery. When the Twenty Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution was enacted in 1964, it outlawed poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting in Federal elections. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down poll taxes in 1966, finding them to violate the “equal protection clause” to the US Constitution and ruled that they could not be imposed as voting prerequisites in state and local elections.
In the United Kingdom, the poll tax served to preclude those of non-white origin from voting. In 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced a poll tax that provided certain exemptions for the disabled and individuals with low income. It was very poorly received by the public and contributed to Margaret Thatcher’s replacement in the same year. This tax in fact led to what became known as the Poll Tax Riots in London. Rioting was so intense in Trafalgar Square that one of the riots was named the Battle of Trafalgar.
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