Tax per head
A
poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount applied to an individual in accordance with the census. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century. There have been several famous cases of head taxes in history, notably in parts of the United States with the intent of disenfranchising poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and white people of foreign descent. The tax was marginal and never collected in practice, but payment of the tax would be a prerequisite for minority voting. In the United Kingdom, poll taxes were levied by the governments of John of Gaunt in the 14th century, 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 specialized 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 today a common idiom for voting in many countries, a new folk etymology has supplanted common knowledge of the phrase's true origins.