From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: The Poll Tax
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:32:24 -0000




Heather wrote (about the poll tax)

      
> Actually it was merely modified and renamed 'council tax'.


The council tax is terrible but it isn't the same thing
as the poll tax. 

"Poll" is an old anglo-saxon word meaning "head". 
>From that you get things like "polling station" 
and "opinion poll" which involve "counting heads".
A poll tax is a tax "per head". If you've got a head,
you are supposed to pay it. That is why the tax which
Maggie Thatcher and co. called the "community charge"
became universally known as the "poll tax". The theory
of the "community charge" was that every individual
person was supposed to pay exactly the same amount,
regardless of whether they were rich or poor.
That is what made it so widely hated.

The council tax, by contrast, is not a tax "per head".
It is a tax levied on  _property_ . The council tax
divides property into five different "bands". If you
live in a run-down council flat in St. Mary's (lowest 
band) then you pay less council tax than somebody 
who owns a big house in a wealthier area. Now, the
council tax isn't really a "progressive" tax. Somebody 
with a huge mansion set in its own rolling acres of 
private land doesn't pay an awful lot more than somebody 
with a nice house in Broughty Ferry. But although it's
not "fair", the council tax does nevertheless divide 
property up into five bands, and it is  _not_  a tax 
"per head", therefore it is not the poll tax. When 
we got rid of the poll tax, we did so by direct action,
and that really was a tremendous victory. Some people
have found this hard to understand, but as Andy, or
maybe it was Iain, said, you really had to be there. 
And as Roger, who 


> spent two summers in lancashire and birmingham 
> during the period 


says 


> the anti-poll tax fun WAS fun


which is certainly how I remember it, it was a  LOT
of fun. And the day that Maggie Thatcher was forced
into resigning, a reporter/photographer from the Aberdeen
"Press and Journal" newspaper took a photo of me, with
a big grin on my face, hanging a string of flags out 
in the street in celebration. Of course I knew she would 
just be replaced by some other politician, but her downfall 
was sweet nevertheless. Like the full-page report in 
the P&J said, "Dave Coull was only sorry he had not been 
able to get hold of a recording of the Hallelujah Chorus 
to play at full blast out in the street". 


Dave Coull