What is "poll tax"

Poll \Poll\, n. [Akin to LG. polle the head, the crest of a bird, the top of a tree, OD. pol, polle, Dan. puld the crown of a hat.]

1. The head; the back part of the head. ``All flaxen was his poll.''
   --Shak.

2. A number or aggregate of heads; a list or register of heads or individuals.

   We are the greater poll, and in true fear They gave us our demands.
   --Shak.

   The muster file, rotten and sound, upon my life, amounts not to fifteen thousand poll.
   --Shak.

3. Specifically, the register of the names of electors who may vote in an election.

4. The casting or recording of the votes of registered electors; as, the close of the poll.

   All soldiers quartered in place are to remove . . . and not to return till one day after the poll is ended.
   --Blackstone.

5. pl. The place where the votes are cast or recorded; as, to go to the polls.

6. The broad end of a hammer; the but of an ax.

7. (Zo["o]l.) The European chub. See Pollard, 3 (a) .

   Poll book, a register of persons entitled to vote at an election.

   Poll evil (Far.), an inflammatory swelling or abscess on a horse's head, confined beneath the great ligament of the neck.

   Poll pick (Mining), a pole having a heavy spike on the end, forming a kind of crowbar.

   Poll tax, a tax levied by the head, or poll; a capitation tax.

n. 1 A tax determined as a uniform, fixed amount per individual. 2 (context US English) A tax required in order to vote.

n. a tax of a fixed amount per person and payable as a requirement for the right to vote

A poll tax, also known as a head tax or capitation, is a tax of a uniform, fixed amount applied to an individual in accordance with the census (as opposed to a percentage of income, or any proxy for ability-to-pay). Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century. They have also been used in the past, notably in the United States, to disenfranchise minority voters. 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.

A poll tax is a tax of a fixed amount applied to every individual regardless of income.

Poll tax may also refer to:

• Poll tax (United Kingdom), officially known as the "Community Charge", a former system of local taxation
• Poll tax (United States), a version of the poll tax once levied in the United States as a precondition to voting
• Head tax (Canada), or poll tax, a form of the tax in Canada
• New Zealand head tax, a poll tax once levied on Chinese immigrants

right|thumb|upright=1.15|Receipt for payment of poll tax, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, 1917 (the $1 tax would be equal to $18.77 in 2016 dollars)

In the United States, payment of a poll tax was a prerequisite to the registration for voting in a number of states. The tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow laws. After the right to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a number of states enacted poll tax laws as a device for restricting voting rights. The laws often included a grandfather clause, which allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax. These laws, along with unfairly implemented literacy tests and extra-legal intimidation, achieved the desired effect of disenfranchising African-American and Native American voters, as well as poor whites.

Proof of payment of a poll tax was a prerequisite to voter registration in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia (1877), North and South Carolina, Virginia (until 1882 and again from 1902 with its new constitution), and Texas (1902). The Texas poll tax "required otherwise eligible voters to pay between $1.50 and $1.75 to register to vote – a lot of money at the time, and a big barrier to the working classes and poor." Georgia created a cumulative poll tax requirement in 1877: men of any race 21 to 60 years of age had to pay a sum of money for every year from the time they had turned 21, or from the time that the law took effect.

The poll tax requirements applied to whites as well as blacks, and also adversely affected poor citizens. The laws that allowed the poll tax did not specify a certain group of people. This meant that anyone, including white women could also be discriminated against when they went to vote. One example is in Alabama where white women were discriminated against and then organized to secure their right to vote. One group of women that did this was Women's Joint Legislative Council of Alabama (WJLC). African American women also organized in groups against being denied voting rights. One African American woman sued the county with the help of the NAACP. She sued for her right to vote as she was stopped from even registering to vote. As a result of her suing the county the mailman did not deliver her mail for quite some time. Many states required payment of the tax at a time separate from the election, and then required voters to bring receipts with them to the polls. If they could not locate such receipts, they could not vote. In addition, many states surrounded registration and voting with complex record-keeping requirements. These were particularly difficult for sharecropper and tenant farmers to comply with, as they moved frequently.

The poll tax was sometimes used alone or together with a literacy qualification. In a kind of grandfather clause, North Carolina in 1900 exempted from the poll tax those men entitled to vote as of January 1, 1867. This excluded all blacks, who did not then have suffrage.

Although largely associated with states of the former Confederacy, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states. For instance, California had a poll tax until 1914 when it was abolished through a popular referendum.