Monday 23 February 2009

A brief history of UK tax, Part 2.

It all started to go wrong around the time of the Magna Carta, when the barons basically said that they were no longer going to pass on the rent they had collected, and if The King needed money he'd have to collect it from the little people. So The King imposed all manner of taxes, tithes, imposts and duties to fund his lifestyle and various foreign military adventures, while the barons sat pretty. The little people were now of course paying twice - once for the value of what they got (exclusive possession of the land they farmed) and again for the cost of whatever else  it was that the barons or The King wanted to do.

Click here for full series, next episode tomorrow.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tithes to the Church?

Mark Wadsworth said...

The Church was basically an arm of the state, until the State pinched the rights to the tithes in 1530. So that's income tax in my book.

DBC Reed said...

I would n't be so sanguine about tithes. English farmers were protesting about paying tithes( to the Church) in the agricultural depresssion of the 1930's.There was some kind of Tithe commutation act in the 19th century, but all this did, was allowed you to pay in money instead of kind ( corn mostly).Very big deal.There was a Tithe Act in 1936-ish but I don't know the details.

Peter Risdon said...

I know you're being brief, but this isn't quite right. There were tithes to the church and also for the milling of grain (a not negligible 10%). The tax dispute that led up to Magna Carta was over scutage, the Barons claiming (wrongly) that they weren't required to pay it for overseas campaigning. John had lost Normandy in 1204 and spent a lot of the following decade trying to get it back, levying taxes on all kinds of things. For example, he took advantage of rights to dowry for the hands of heiresses. Magna Carta lists lots of these inappropriate taxes and says he mustn't do it. But scutage was the biggie that led more or less directly to Magna Carta.

Peter Risdon said...

See here

Mark Wadsworth said...

PR, fair points. But Magna Carta mainly stopped the King from collecting taxes from Barons, who cheerfully continued exploiting the people beneath themselves. The fact that the King of the time was wasting all the tax revenues is another topic.

Peter Risdon said...

"Magna Carta mainly stopped the King from collecting taxes from Barons"

I don't think that's true. What it did do was begin the process of requiring consent for taxation. None of the previous sources of tax revenue for the King were abolished by Magna Carta, that I'm aware of. But there were restrictions. 150 years later, Parliament was meeting regularly, Lords and Commons, to approve taxation (not to legislate) and this was pretty much the case a couple of centuries after that when the Long Parliament was sitting, refusing to authorise taxation for Charles.

Which Barons to King taxes were abolished by Magna Carta?

Mark Wadsworth said...

PR, you are splitting hairs now. Suffice to say, the Barons ended up paying rather less tax and the little people continued paying market rents (or paying market prices for land) to feudal landlords as well as a load of new taxes directly to the King.

Peter Risdon said...

No, genuinely interested. I've not seen MC presented as a turning point in taxation policy before. Trying to find figures for sources and amounts of taxes in the relevant period, but online is pretty useless for that sort of thing, and I can't find my copy of Postan.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I've boiled the history of tax from Anglo-Saxon times right up to the post-modern tax/subsidy system down to five simple diagrams, so there is a lot of generalisation involved.

In today's chart, I could have included a dotted arrow from Barons to Crown to show that they still paid some taxes immediately after MC, but the chart covers a period of half a millenium until the Industrial Revolution, during which the arrow became thinner and thinner and more and more dotted, if you see what I mean.

Peter Risdon said...

Yes, but I'm still unconvinced you're right about this. The geld (tax/rent on land holding) had withered through the twelfth century - between 1154 and 1190 it was only levied twice. Income tax had been raised at an eye-watering 25% on one occasion under John's predecessor, Richard.

The simplification might be better if you take Magna Carta out of the picture. I don't think it had anything to do with it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PR, MC was indeed just one of many turning points, I just wanted to draw a line between Anglo-Saxon and late mediaeval.

Your point about the geld is also correct, but the little people at the bottom sure as heck were still paying market rents to the next guy up the chain, and it's the little people I'm concerned with.