Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain by Stephen Halliday Page B
Authors: Stephen Halliday
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of them survive, some having been converted to dwellings .
An even more decisive step against smuggling had been taken forty years earlier, in 1784, when the East India Company persuaded the government to reduce the duties on tea to a point where the smugglers had little to gain. In two years the legitimate imports of tea grew from 5.8 million to 16.3 million pounds weight, which gives some idea of the quantity that was previously being smuggled. In the following century other tariffs were reduced or abolished as Britain entered its era of Free Trade. In 1815 the government passed the Corn Laws. This was a form of excise tax on wheat, the purpose of which was to protect British farmers against cheaper imported produce rather than to raise money for the government. Since wheat was a bulky product it was much more difficult to smuggle than tea, tobacco and alcohol. The Corn Laws were unpopular because they forced up the price of bread and made only a very small contribution to the exchequer. They were abolished by Robert Peel’s government in 1846.
Pitt’s Pictures and Daylight Robbery
A window into revenue-generation
W indow tax was first introduced in 1696. Each dwelling with any windows had to pay a tax of two shillings (10p); those with ten to twenty windows paid four shillings; those with more than twenty windows paid eight shillings. Certain poor families were exempted and the tax may be compared with the later rates and council tax. It was easy to assess but, like all taxes, it was unpopular and regarded by some as ‘a tax on light and air’. It may also be the origin of the expression ‘daylight robbery’ and some householders managed to reduce their payments by bricking up their windows, a feature of some of the buildings in the fashionable financial district of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. These became known as ‘Pitt’s Pictures’ when the Window Tax was increased by William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s. Some wealthy families, however, decided that the construction of houses with many windows was a way of drawing attention to their affluence. By 1815 the tax was raising the very substantial sum of £2 million a year to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. The tax was finally abolished in 1851, coincidentally the year of the Great Exhibition staged in Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, an incredible erection of cast iron and acres of glass which was followed by the construction of many similar buildings.
William Pitt Strikes Again
Income tax: just a temporary arrangement, right?
I ncome tax had long been resisted on the grounds that the disclosure of income that it required was a gross intrusion on personal liberty (besides the less noble reason that people just didn’t want to pay it). It was introduced as a ‘temporary’ measure in 1799 by William Pitt the Younger to finance the wars against France and in 1816, as the wars ended, the tax was abolished. However the gradual expansion of government activities in the 19th century into fields like education, sanitation, the Poor Law and local government required its ‘temporary’ reintroduction in 1842. Thereafter numerous governments, including those of both Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), tried to abolish it again but without success. As late as the 1870s Gladstone tried to lay his hands on some land which had been reclaimed from the Thames by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Board used the land to create the Victoria Embankment but Gladstone tried to claim some surplus plots to build offices whose rents, he hoped, would generate enough revenue to do away with income tax. A petition to the Queen organized by the MP and newspaper seller W H Smith frustrated this noble plan so, as well as income tax, we now also have Victoria Embankment Gardens free of Gladstone’s proposed offices. The highest rate of income tax was reached in World War II when surtax, on incomes above £2,000, amounted to nineteen shillings and sixpence (97.5p) in the
An even more decisive step against smuggling had been taken forty years earlier, in 1784, when the East India Company persuaded the government to reduce the duties on tea to a point where the smugglers had little to gain. In two years the legitimate imports of tea grew from 5.8 million to 16.3 million pounds weight, which gives some idea of the quantity that was previously being smuggled. In the following century other tariffs were reduced or abolished as Britain entered its era of Free Trade. In 1815 the government passed the Corn Laws. This was a form of excise tax on wheat, the purpose of which was to protect British farmers against cheaper imported produce rather than to raise money for the government. Since wheat was a bulky product it was much more difficult to smuggle than tea, tobacco and alcohol. The Corn Laws were unpopular because they forced up the price of bread and made only a very small contribution to the exchequer. They were abolished by Robert Peel’s government in 1846.
Pitt’s Pictures and Daylight Robbery
A window into revenue-generation
W indow tax was first introduced in 1696. Each dwelling with any windows had to pay a tax of two shillings (10p); those with ten to twenty windows paid four shillings; those with more than twenty windows paid eight shillings. Certain poor families were exempted and the tax may be compared with the later rates and council tax. It was easy to assess but, like all taxes, it was unpopular and regarded by some as ‘a tax on light and air’. It may also be the origin of the expression ‘daylight robbery’ and some householders managed to reduce their payments by bricking up their windows, a feature of some of the buildings in the fashionable financial district of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. These became known as ‘Pitt’s Pictures’ when the Window Tax was increased by William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s. Some wealthy families, however, decided that the construction of houses with many windows was a way of drawing attention to their affluence. By 1815 the tax was raising the very substantial sum of £2 million a year to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. The tax was finally abolished in 1851, coincidentally the year of the Great Exhibition staged in Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, an incredible erection of cast iron and acres of glass which was followed by the construction of many similar buildings.
William Pitt Strikes Again
Income tax: just a temporary arrangement, right?
I ncome tax had long been resisted on the grounds that the disclosure of income that it required was a gross intrusion on personal liberty (besides the less noble reason that people just didn’t want to pay it). It was introduced as a ‘temporary’ measure in 1799 by William Pitt the Younger to finance the wars against France and in 1816, as the wars ended, the tax was abolished. However the gradual expansion of government activities in the 19th century into fields like education, sanitation, the Poor Law and local government required its ‘temporary’ reintroduction in 1842. Thereafter numerous governments, including those of both Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), tried to abolish it again but without success. As late as the 1870s Gladstone tried to lay his hands on some land which had been reclaimed from the Thames by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Board used the land to create the Victoria Embankment but Gladstone tried to claim some surplus plots to build offices whose rents, he hoped, would generate enough revenue to do away with income tax. A petition to the Queen organized by the MP and newspaper seller W H Smith frustrated this noble plan so, as well as income tax, we now also have Victoria Embankment Gardens free of Gladstone’s proposed offices. The highest rate of income tax was reached in World War II when surtax, on incomes above £2,000, amounted to nineteen shillings and sixpence (97.5p) in the
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