What was the Poll Tax?

[dogsod]

I'm too young to remember it and I can't for thw life of me figure it out. It was going to be a community charge that was replaced by council tax anyway? What's the difference?
What would it have cost you and what was it for?

I have googled it and it just comes up with long, pages and pages. Can anyone give me a clue please. Its brought up a lot on here and I'm getting a bit grumpy reading it and not knowing what it is

It destroyed the Thatcher government because it was an Ill-thought out measure which had a disproportionate negative impact on lower earners, and favoured the well off. Sound familiar?

@bellinisurge It's an extraordinary thought that if John Smith hadn't died suddenly in 1994 the last thirty years of history of these isles would (one hopes) have been completely different. I still remember the shock.

‘Poll’ is an archaic term of Germanic origin, meaning ‘head’. Using it to mean ‘counting heads’ is found in phrases like polling station and opinion poll, as well as words like ‘tadpole’ -literally ‘toad head’, or poleaxe, an axe used to strike the head which knocked people to the ground.

I remember it well and thought it was a very fair system (as a single person living in their first house at the time).
The problem was the rate was set too high (even I could see that).

omfg
why take candy from babies when you can take their milk?

and the Wendy House poster. That is so cute!

No, Council tax isn't fair either. There should be a local income tax. Or wealth tax.

Well I do know this.

The right to buy?
We could have benefitted from it and My parents have benefitted from it but Shock Horror! I am still against it!

He was a wonderful man who would have been a great PM. I remember when his death was announced, I was a couple of weeks away from giving birth and very emotional and I just cried and cried.

It was a disgrace thatcher really hated Scotland so we were first tp "trial" it. I never paid it protested and marched against it, !

Perhaps if the property could go back to the council when they die? So you can buy your family home and when you die it goes back to the council. If you want to sell you have to sell back to the council?

Not directly related to the poll tax but this is one of the first big protests I remember (as well as the Berlin Wall falling) and I feel like the 80’s was such a turbulent time that it kind of built up a fire in people that isn’t always there anymore.

People directly participated in making changes happen and that doesn’t happen now with petitions and such.

Very few politicians still deeply missed after they die, I would think. He is still missed. Such a loss.

Some councils were more stringent than others. I had friends living in Lambeth who never got a bill, despite phoning the council to tell them. (They were students who were worried that non-payment could impact their future profession).

I lived in Hounslow when it was canned, and there was a picture in the local paper of a gravestone with “RIP Poll Tax” on it.

IIRC The Duke of Westminster actually paid the poll tax for all his staff because even he could see how ridiculous this was

I'm loving this thread.

Poll tax was introduced when I was 16. My mum said at the time she wanted me out at 18 because I'd probably not have a full-time job by then and she's buggered if she had to pay some of it for me. Finances were tighter than a ducks bum back then. Thankfully the riots happened, Thatcher quit and we got cuddly but dull Mr Major instead. And I wasn't evicted.

@MonkeypuzzleClimber Are you a purple Person?

It was a trial local tax system. which based payments on the number of adults living at an address, rather than the value of the property.

I think it was a sound system, given we all have the same benefit from the things it paid for - local infrastructure, local services etc.

However, it seems that demands for equality only extent to "getting" and not when it comes to "paying".

it was first trialled in Scotland, where socialists managed to turn it into a classic left wing Scottish-grievance against the "bad English tooarreezz" who were supposedly inflicting misery on Scotland. (the same sentiments which sustain the SNP today).

Why should we contribute anything, they argued, instead the (typically unspecified) "rich" should pay for it all.

I think when it comes to income tax, certainly those who earn more should pay more (and naturally do), but when it comes to local services which give everyone the same benefit, we should all pay an affordable fair share.

I mean, we have got to give something back in return for our rights and citizenship, no?

The system has not been totally abandoned given, in modern Council Tax, single people living alone get a discount, but houses with 2+ adults living there pay a higher rate.

I totally agree that the very rich should have paid more but for us it made no difference. I can't remember the exact figures but for arguments sake let,'s say the rates were £500. We got billed for £250 each so no change. It was good for our immediate neighbours in identical properties. Both were elderly single people and their 'rate's dropped by half.

Even students had to pay it. It was a fixed amount that every member of the household had to pay, for families with more than 2 adults in the house it usually worked out a lot more expensive than the old housing rates which was similar to council tax in that it was per household based on size of property.

No! Students did not have to pay it!

Before I went to college I was a full time mum so zero income of my own, which meant that DH, who wasn’t earning much, had to pay it on my behalf as well as paying his own. When I started college not only did I receive a small bursary but my community charge was reduced to nil!

On the other hand, people on income support had to pay a small amount.

The theory behind it was that there are lots of people who do not pay council tax; ie a household with, say, 5 adults, (parents with 3 adult children). Similarly, (prior to the Poll Tax) a household with 1 adult (maybe a retired person) paid the same council tax on their house.
The idea was that instead of a tax on the house, it should be an individual tax paid by each adult. ie a community charge - dubbed the Poll Tax.
Of course it did not work, and was a very bad idea.
The household with 5 adults, is generally a short term situation, and the council charge for the pensioner, is something that would liekly encourage them to downsize.
It did not work, because it did not take into account people's ability to pay (those with low earnings, those out of work, etc). Whereas a house is fixed, many individuals took themselves off the electoral register to avoid paying, and thus denying themselves the opportunity to vote.
In our case, the council tax for our house, replaced by the 'community charge', for 2 adults, (despite me being a SAHM) was roughly the same, but this would have varied between councils.
After a few years, the opposition was such, it was replaced by the new council tax, previously based on the Rateable Value of your house, now based on the actual value of your house as when it was last done in 1996? (And a single person household gets a small rebate).

Thatcher Milk Snatcher wasn’t quite true.
BBC article

Responding to the demands to end free school milk, Mrs Thatcher said: "I think that the complete withdrawal of free milk for our school children would be too drastic a step and would arouse more widespread public antagonism than the saving justifies."

I remember Margaret Thatcher saying that the Community Charge would be a much fairer way of levying local taxes.

The basic premise was that if, for example, there was a row of 3 terraced houses with different groups of people living in them, each household would pay according to who lives there.
So, in the first house is an elderly widow living alone; in the 2nd house a young couple with a child; in the 3rd an older couple with 2 adult children and all 4 of them working.
Under the rates system, all households would pay the same amount, so the elderly widow would pay 100% whereas the household with the 4 working adults would share the cost between them, so 25% each.
The Community Charge was supposed to make it fairer by charging per adult rather than per household, so the elderly widow's "household" of one adult would pay less than the other household of four adults.

Unfortunately, the Community Charge was badly administered and ill thought out and so we ended up with the Council Tax, which is basically the rates under a different name. It was rushed through, after it became obvious that the Community Charge was unworkable, and houses were categorised into "bands" from A to G. Many houses were wrongly categorised, as they were never inspected: they were literally just driven past and were categorised on external appearance from the kerbside.

I am one of many people who discovered, many years later, that their house had been in the wrong council tax band since the outset. Fortunately, I was able to get it re-categorised in 2012 and recieved a big refund - about £4,000 as I recall.
I'll bet there are still loads of houses and flats that are in the wrong CT band.

My FIL went to court for non-payment!! Not sure what the upshot was. He definitely didn't go to prison but I think he was fined.

Which was ridiculous because he couldn't pay that either...

When he died, he had absolutely not a brass farthing to his name. But he STILL voted Tory throughout his life. I never understood why and we never ever discussed politics.

@Mrsjayy

thatcher really hated Scotland

No she didn't,* *that is the classic left wing scots inadequacy talking where every policy or action someone might disagree with (even slightly) is portayed as a highly sinister and vindictive personal attack on people.

Eg Thatcher is portrayed as attacking miners - but what future did coal mining ever have, in todays world with climate panics etc?

She is also portrayed as having intentionally destroyed industry, but in fact it was trade unions who did that with constant strikes and uncompetitive inefficiency.

I was a student living in shared rented accommodation and was massively impacted by suddenly having to pay this new bill while the rent was not decreased as the landlord didn't have to pay rates any more. I have a vague memory that students didn't pay the full poll tax amount, but even so it was a lot to me!

My mother (bless her!) decided this was unfair and sent me a cheque every month to cover it. I got a full student grant because of my parent's low income, and they were unable to ever give me any more or top up, so this was a big deal for her and showed how strongly she felt about it.

THEN when I graduated and moved away from my student city, the council decided that I had not paid the full amount and started debt recovery proceedings - for something like 32p, definitely less than a quid. They got my parents address from the university and by the time I got a letter they were threatening court action. Mum said to leave it with her and I never heard from them again. I have a feeling some poor person at the council got a blasting by telephone.

So between the Poll Tax, Grants Not Loans and marching against Apartheid I spent a lot of my student years marching. Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out!