POLL TAX

noun (Business World) (Politics) A colloquial name in the UK for the community charge, used especially by its opponents. Etymology: So named because it is a capitation tax, that is a tax levied on every person, or 'head' of population (poll being an old word for 'head'); poll-tax is an ancient term, first used in England (in place of the earlier poll-money) for the capitation taxes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. History and Usage: The community charge was nicknamed poll tax by its opponents almost as soon as it was announced in 1985, and this name was soon used as frequently in print as its official counterpart (especially in the popular press). The growing wave of protest which the poll tax provoked centred on this derogatory nickname; its historical associations with the oppression of the populace in earlier centuries, when the poll money, too, had provoked civil unrest, meant that it offered protesters a considerably more emotive focus than the bland and official name community charge. For further history see community charge. Militant supporters started to form local anti-poll tax unions or to hijack ones formed by other groups...Many of the 'smash the poll tax' leaflets...are being printed by Militant--the wealthiest of the Trotskyite groups--at its East London presses. The Times 8 Mar. 1990, p. 5 Mrs Thatcher's new communications supremo, Brendan Bruce, was quoted yesterday saying that the handling of the Harrods report was 'a classic cock-up'. How would he describe the handling of the poll tax fiasco? Today 12 Mar. 1990, p. 6 Leading poll tax protester Alistair Mitchell admitted organisers had asked European activists to join in. Daily Star 23 Oct. 1990, p. 2