Tax Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Poll==== {{Main|Poll tax}} A poll tax, also called a ''per capita tax'', or ''capitation tax'', is a tax that levies a set amount per individual. It is an example of the concept of [[fixed tax]]. One of the earliest taxes mentioned in the [[Bible]] of a half-shekel per annum from each adult Jew (Ex. 30:11β16) was a form of the poll tax. Poll taxes are administratively cheap because they are easy to compute and collect and difficult to cheat. Economists have considered poll taxes economically efficient because people are presumed to be in fixed supply and poll taxes, therefore, do not lead to economic distortions. However, poll taxes are very unpopular because poorer people pay a higher proportion of their income than richer people. In addition, the supply of people is in fact not fixed over time: on average, couples will choose to have fewer children if a poll tax is imposed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/listdocs.cfm?topic2id=60 |title=Tax Facts | Tax Facts Listing |publisher=Taxpolicycenter.org |access-date=27 March 2009}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=June 2011}} The introduction of a poll tax in medieval England was the primary cause of the 1381 [[Peasants' Revolt]]. Scotland was the first to be used to test the new poll tax in 1989 with England and Wales in 1990. The change from progressive local taxation based on property values to a single-rate form of taxation regardless of ability to pay (the [[Poll tax (Great Britain)|Community Charge]], but more popularly referred to as the Poll Tax), led to widespread refusal to pay and to incidents of civil unrest, known colloquially as the '[[Poll Tax Riots]]'. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page