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A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue.
Poll taxes are regressive, meaning the higher someone's income is, the lower the tax is as a proportion of income: for example, a $100 tax on an income of $10,000 is a 1% tax rate, while $100 tax on a $500 income is 20%. Its acceptance or "neutrality" depends on the balance between the tax demanded and the resources of the population.
The poll tax mechanism varied on a state-by-state basis; in Alabama, the poll tax was cumulative, meaning that a man had to pay all poll taxes due from the age of twenty-one onward in order to vote. In other states, poll taxes had to be paid for several years before being eligible to vote. Enforcement of poll tax laws was patchy.
History of the poll tax by state from 1868 to 1966. Southern states had adopted the poll tax as a requirement for voting as part of a series of laws in the late 19th century intended to exclude black Americans from politics so far as practicable without violating the Fifteenth Amendment. This required that voting not be limited by "race, color ...
The Civil War Income Tax and the Republican Party, 1861–1872. (New York: Algora Publishing, 2010) excerpt; Stabile, Donald. The Origins of American Public Finance: Debates over Money, Debt, and Taxes in the Constitutional Era, 1776–1836 (1998) excerpt and text search; Thorndike, Joseph J. Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR.
In the 1st century AD, Jewish Zealots in Judaea resisted the poll tax instituted by the Roman Empire. [3]: 1–7 Jesus was accused of promoting tax resistance prior to his torture and execution ("We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ a King" — Luke 23:2). [4]
Although the Fifteenth Amendment was never interpreted to prohibit poll taxes, in 1962 the Twenty-fourth Amendment was adopted banning poll taxes in federal elections, and in 1966 the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966) [73] that state poll taxes violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause ...
In 1938, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare created an anti-poll tax committee with president Maury Maverick and Virginia Durr as vice president. Joseph Gelders acted as executive secretary. Within a year, Maverick left the organization and Durr took over running the committee. Gelders was often away, working in labor organizing. [1]