Talk:History of taxation in the United Kingdom

Started article
I have started this much needed article just to get it started. My impetus was a red link to History of British Taxation in the article on British taxation. I have some knowledge of British history and also of tax law, but I am an expert in neither area and perhaps not even a competent amateur.

Organization will be a difficulty, as is so often the case in history, since there are a number of competing logical organizational schemes. I have chosen the historical default -- time -- as the first-level organization scheme, and type of tax as the second level organizational scheme. Clearly there is no perfect scheme, and I recognise that several important issues, which would be better treated in a single article, will be chopped up.

I propose to treat feudal obligations in this article as well as entitlements of estates. Even to this day, Prince Charles (as Duke of Cornwall) is entitled by birth to sturgeon which wash up on some beaches in Cornwall; or perhaps, to be more serious, is entitled to the escheat of estates without heirs, which amounted to ₤160,000, I believe, in 2009.

If somebody strongly believes that either of these subjects should be the subject of a separate article and is willing to do the work, feel free :) Apollo (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Lacunae to be filled, please
I was hoping to find details of the Sales and Luxury tax which preceded VAT after the removal of rationing in the 1950s.

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£150 per annum
While £12,959 might today ostensibly buy you as much beer, bread or milk as £150 in 1842, I've removed the figure as in the context of taxation, £13,000 would be a below-average salary in today's Britain, whereas £150 was far more than most working class people earned in 1842. 93.136.124.206 (talk) 02:50, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April
I have been editing Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 to get it up to WP:Good Article standard per WP:Wikiproject History. At present, it contains an excellent section, Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. It is extensively referenced and (IMO) is close to GA standard. The problem with it is only that it is in the wrong article: it is too far off-topic there whereas it would fit very well here.

Unless anyone objects here (or there, I have left a similar message at its talk page), I will use the 'bold' version of the WP:SPLIT procedure to move the entire section here (as a new section at the end) in the next few days or so. I will keep a copy of its summary sub-section in that article, with a main directing readers to this article for the detail. (I will of course give attribution to as its leading editor.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:03, 5 December 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Self-published source
I would like to ask if I could cite my own self published book in the article section headed Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April. I know this is not normally allowed but I think it could be helpful. I re-wrote the section on the tax year and changed the explanation. The article previously took the view mentioned under the last heading Incorrect explanation for 6 April year. The article cites 3 sources for the revised view in footnotes 31 to 33. However, the first two refer to short footnotes in works by the same author, Dr Robert Poole. I have cited two references to Dr Poole because the first is to an article available online and the second is to a book which is not available online. The third link is to Professor Duncan Steel's book Marking Time which has a short passage on the subject. These authors stimulated my own researches which resulted in a book which gives a detailed explanation and, much more important, has 440 pages of appendices including documents from the National Archives and the British Library which have not been published and are not available online. An eBook version of my book is available free of charge from Lulu.com: Why the Tax Year Begins on Sixth April. It is also available from Amazon but they insist on a minimum charge of £1.99. Honandal2 (talk) 11:02, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately no, because Wikipedia has no reliable way to discriminate between serious researchers and nut-cases, between the conscientious and the cherry-pickers. So we let the professional publishers decide. For the long explanation, see WP:SELFPUBLISH. In your case, I really wish we could. Is there a journal that would accept something short and tightly focused, like Poole's 1995 Give us our eleven days paper? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:03, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I tend to interpret these policies very strictly, others may be more liberal (but Lulu.com is named explicitly as perennially unreliable, so that is not a good start, so maybe best to just say Amazon). Anyway, I came back to say that it might be worth raising your question at Teahouse, though I wouldn't be optimistic.
 * In all honesty, I feel that getting a paper published in a journal is your best avenue as it will open other doors, not just Wikipedia. It doesn't have to be an academic journal, any respectable periodical will do so long as it is not on the wrong side of the list at Reliable sources/Perennial sources. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:20, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I only tried this because you suggested a while ago on my talk page on the calendar site that I could try it. I abandon the idea. Honandal2 (talk) 15:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What I said about the Land Tax article (that it would be one really be worth having) is still true but I recognise that it leaves you with the problem of needing to cite established authors. The no original research restriction is a real downer but I hope you see why Wikipedia has not choice but to have it. I have come across some appallingly written and abominably researched material, where the author paid a vampire publisher to have it printed, bound and published but never distributed or sold. Thinking further about the journal or magazine idea, cash-straitened publishers must be very glad to have 'free' articles right now ('free' as in the catch is that you get to mention your book, like star authors going on chat shows). I really hope you get somewhere with it. Best wishes. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:28, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I'll just say that I have long taken an interest in this subject and I have downloaded Alan O'Brien's book, Why the Tax Year Begins on Sixth April. I hope Alan won't mind if I am tempted to mine it for published sources to supplement the present paragraph here. Thomas Peardew (talk) 09:33, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Removal of "why it's in April"
I've removed the following section from the article.

There's a few reasons for this:


 * 1) Much of it was full of references to locations that were apparently wrong without sources (e.g. "some tax websites").
 * 2) The well referenced source that did exist was used to show an apparently incorrect reason
 * 3) It's not explicitly part of the history as such.
 * 4) It's written in the style of an article rather than encyclopaedic entry.
 * 5) The style doesn't match the rest of the article (i.e. chronologically listing changes)
 * 6) The actual reason wasn't well highlighted.

86.142.125.203 (talk) 19:17, 28 May 2021 (UTC)


 * It is evident from the way you have written this that you are already familiar with Wikipedia. Do you have a good reason for not having made this edit with your user name? You must also know that such a drastic change requires consensus. Right now, I have reverted it under the WP:BRD policy. I will follow this with a rebuttal. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:30, 28 May 2021 (UTC)


 * (Also posted on your talk page) Honestly, I considered it so out of place that it made no sense to keep it (WP:BOLD) and didn't take the time to login to do it. Archiving it to the talk page made sense to salvage the small fraction of historical information suitable for the page.


 * A user visiting the page History of taxation in the United Kingdom is not expecting discussion of "incorrect theories" about why the tax year is what it is. They're expecting a chronological history. The fact that the incorrect (published book references) are disputed on the article is mostly WP:OR to be honest - if the book is both notable and actually wrong there should be widespread coverage in reliable sources. Some content can be salvaged in the article, by putting it in the correct place chronologically. The rest belongs elsewhere on Wikipedia/as an article on a reliable source which we reference. Philipwhiuk (talk) 19:37, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * A user visiting the page History of taxation in the United Kingdom is very likely to expect to find an answer to the frequently asked question why does the tax year end at such a strange date?. So we do need to provide that answer. I agree that that there is a good argument to reduce the size of the answer to that given in the #Summary but how it can be done briefly given how widely the fictitious explanation has been regurgitated is beyond my editing skills.
 * Unfortunately it is not difficult to find sources that repeat the canard of the Revenue having its own private leap-day in 1800 – which would have been a gross breach of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, which stated explicitly that 1800 would not be a leap year – is an attractive canard because 'everybody knows' that the Revenue are a bunch of thieving b______s etc etc. But if so, where is the Act? the Order in Council? the news reports just two years into the very unpopular imposition of income tax?
 * The Poole paper (1995, avail on Jstor) and book (1998) comprehensively demolishes the unsupported assertion of Philip (1921). Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it. – Johnathan Swift Otherwise I have no idea why the nonsense keeps being repeated.
 * I agree that it is not explicitly part of the history, but it certainly is implicit. Land taxes and window taxes were due on Lady Day, 25 March, which translated to 5 April New Style.
 * I agree. But the answer is copy-editing, not deletion.
 * I can understand that argument and my response to #4 applies. A real stickler for the academic style would say 1752: Land tax due date changed from 25 March to 5 April.[a] and put the whole thing in a footnote [a] that quoted the national accounts continued to be made up to end on the Old Style quarter-days of 5 January, 5 April, 5 July and 10 October.[39] and add that nothing out of the ordinary happened in 1800 because it wasn't a leap year and in any case the Revenue levied tax on annual income and really not remotely concerned with single days. Or 1798: income tax first introduced.[b] where footnote [b] would say that the tax was very unpopular and idea that the Revenue could break the law to slip in an extra day just two years into the tax without even more widespread and extensively reported opprobrium, is beyond belief.
 * Again, copyedit rather than deletion. Although I didn't write the material, I did read it very carefully and didn't really notice that the explanation is not well exposed. Hopefully your new eyes will see a better way to express it.
 * You say elsewhere that you think the section breaches OR: since everything is cited, I don't see where you get that from. Early versions were on the edge of WP:SYNTH and I advised the contributing editor of changes that I considered needed making to rectify that. If you think that there are still issues, let's work on them. Deletion is the least satisfactory response – see WP:RETAIN.
 * In summary, I really do think that we should present the answer to this FAQ and that answer muse include an explanation of why the widely-recycled wrong answer is indeed wrong. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:59, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

New book repeats Philip claim
Hi! I've come across a recent book which repeats the incorrect explanation of the origin of the tax year. I wondered whether you think this might be worth including as a link in the article about the tax year. The book is Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue: Tax Follies and Wisdom through the Ages. This was published in the UK by Princeton University Press on 11 May 2021: ISBN: 9780691199542. The authors are Michael Keen (Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund) and Joel Slemrod (Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan). A review of the book by Frances Cairncross in the May 2021 Literary Review features the incorrect tax year explanation. Honandal2 (talk) 13:16, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If an unarguably reliable source repeats the 'incorrect' version, then the question has to asked regarding which version is true! I think we are stuck with Philip's fiction forever. The Economist had an article recently "Zombie research haunts academic literature long after its supposed demise. Dubious papers taint specialist journals long after they have been retracted" (worth a read via Google News) – looks like this is yet another example (I assume the authors cite Philip? I guess you haven't splashed out on a copy!). Did the Cairncross review challenge or merely repeat the fiction? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I think the American authors have picked up the old explanation from UK websites. Frances Cairncross majors on the year start in her review saying "Keen and Slemrod have a nose for a good story", which she then relates as part of the review. You are correct in supposing I haven't bought a copy! I am attempting to contact Keen and Slemrod to explain why they are wrong but it isn't easy to get hold of them. I was successful in persuading the financial journalist Paul Lewis that my view was correct. He used to have the old explanation on his website but he has now got my view. (https://paullewismoney.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-does-tax-year-really-begin-on-6.html) Honandal2 (talk) 14:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)