Talk:Poll taxes in the United States

Poll taxes in other countries
Shouldn't we put a link or some reference to the UK Poll Tax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Charge and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_Tax_Riots) ??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.57.5.123 (talk) 06:58, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

1381 Poll Tax Rising aka The Peasants' Revolt in England doesn't even appear in the article !!! 85.76.147.45 (talk) 20:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Poll taxes were imposed in British colonial Africa as well; see http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zcolpol.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiki butler (talk • contribs) 21:28, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Disenfranchisement
Shouldn't there be some explanation why a law giving voting rights to descendants of voters had the effect of disenfranchising others? (particularly when it actually didn't!) JohnC (talk) 02:26, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * JohnC: It is an accepted fact in US History that Poll taxes were used to keep African Americans from voting. Looking at the statement in the context in the article makes it clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.177.127.118 (talk) 05:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Poll tax creation date
According to this article, poll taxes were created in America in the late 19th Century after the passage of the 15th Amendment (1870). Strange then that the article on Thoreau mentions his delinquent poll tax from several decades earlier: "On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes." So when were poll taxes actually started in the US? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.168.171.236 (talk) 14:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Request for deletion
This article as written contains a number of confusions. I have merged the correct stuff from here with the article Tax per head -- though that article will soon be renamed Poll tax. Mikedelsol (talk) 18:44, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Under which of the deletion criteria do you view this article as worthy of deletion? From what I can tell, this article doesn't satisfy any of them. It's not a great article at the moment, for sure. But the remedy to that is to fix it, not delete it. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 14:52, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Move request
Meant to put this here a while back, but there's a relevant move request taking place at Talk:Tax per head.--Yaksar (let's chat) 18:53, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 02 November 2014

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: withdrawn. Srnec (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Poll tax (United States) → Poll tax – Per an RM at Talk:Tax per head there is no consensus for the change the user who moved the page was trying to implement. Restore the status quo. – Srnec (talk) 02:00, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:44, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Again, the term "poll tax" is ambiguous; the failure of the other move request doesn't change this. Having a US-specific article at an ambiguous title would not be an improvement; the dabpage is the best solution. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it's not ambiguous. Some folks just don't know what it means. Srnec (talk) 03:49, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm somewhat confused. The RM at Talk:Tax per head ended in no consensus, but I would assume we can take from that that a dab page is logical, not this rather confusing proposal.--Yaksar (let's chat) 03:21, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The RM did not determine that there was no primary topic. The rationale given for the move was that tax per head was the primary topic. You cannot turn around now and force an undiscussed move because of another discussion rejected the rationale for the undiscussed move. I agree that the American tax is not the primary topic; yet it ought to be decided by a discussion. Srnec (talk) 03:49, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What undiscussed move, anyway? As far as I can tell, Poll tax (United States) has been at that title for three years. That is the stable title. As the closer of the move discussion mentioned here, I would decline this request. If you'd like to move the article to Poll tax, I'd suggest a multimove request. This seems awfully pointy, given that you supported moving Tax per head to Poll tax. Dekimasu よ! 04:11, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The page was moved in October 2011, but I misread it as being moved just earlier last month. The redirect to tax per head was stable for three years. The entire situation is ridiculous, being based on people's ignorance of what a poll tax is. Srnec (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Poll tax (United States) is the current name of the article and so it should remain and should be clear from the article contents. In U.S history, this tax has been known as the 'poll tax', the anti-democratic purpose of which was limit those who could participate in the 'poll' (government elections in the US) to the richer types who could afford to pay the tax.  Poll tax must remain as a disambiguation page for the various national variations of meaning/use. Hmains (talk) 04:39, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. There are or were poll taxes in other countries, including in England, where "poll" meant "the same amount from each man or from each adult person" and nothing about elections. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:44, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose Clearly not the primary topic as there is also a very well known poll tax in the United Kingdom. Number   5  7  15:58, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Cross-reference (disambiguation) request
Readers of this article need to be able easily to see some reference (perhaps a disambiguation cross-reference) to the article on "poll tax" (in the sense of "Tax per head" or "Capitation"). Maybe there is some other way to handle this, but as it now stands it is confusing for a reader who searches for "poll tax (United States)" on Wikipedia and is led to believe that "poll" necessarily refers to voting and election polling places, which would be a mistaken belief. Thanks. 74.96.103.251 (talk) 00:50, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I added a link at the top of the page to Poll tax (disambiguation). –Prototime (talk · contribs) 16:07, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Inflation in Poll taxes by state
In the table Poll taxes by state, a column could be added to show the inflated price at implementation year using Template:Inflation, ie: 1$ at 1850 is currently worth $.

Disambiguation page
User:Srnec has (twice) modified this article to eliminate the useful link to tax, and (once) to eliminate the hatnote for a disambiguation page listing articles about poll taxes in other jurisdictions. I hope we can discuss the situation here rather than engaging in an edit war.

The disambiguation page includes a link to the generic poll tax article, and lists subsidiary articles about historic poll taxes in Canada, Great Britain, Lithuania, New Zealand, and this article about the United States. The generic main article has become uncomfortably large at 40 Kbyte by including subsidiary sections on each of the situations covered by the listed articles, which would discourage merging the contents of this article.

The principle interest in the subject of poll taxes seems to be study of arguably inappropriate historical use of such taxes. It may debatable whether individuals from that interest group would better find this information through studying the history of a specific location or through the generic subject Poll tax. I suggest the present article language assumes the latter course, while those taking the former course may benefit from a descriptive link to tax and by hatnote notification of both the main article and other articles on the subject for purposes of comparison.

I am prepared to make such edits in the absence of objections.Thewellman (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * This article is for learning about poll taxes in the United States. I do not suggest that people who want to learn about poll taxes in the United States read any other article. I do suggest that if we are going to open with a definition of poll taxes, the least we could do is link to our article on the subject. That done, a link to tax seems a bit redundant. I removed the hatnote per WP:NAMB. I have no interest in fighting over a link to tax and am not terribly concerned about the hatnote (but it does violate the guideline). A link to poll tax should remain so long as we have an article and removing it is inappropriate. That is my concern. Srnec (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Californian Alien Poll Tax
The article does not mention the Californian Alien Poll Tax of the early 20th Century. DuncanHill (talk) 23:32, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The 1920 election was a fascinating one. Proposition 11 levied a poll tax of at least four dollars on every alien male inhabitant of the state. Part of the argument was "well, we can't put poll taxes on voters, but let's levy them on non-citizens." It passed with 82% of the vote. Also on the ballot was Prop 6, which would have prohibited compulsory vaccination in schools; it lost 43-57. Another would have allowed absentee voting by members of the military; failed. The one I wish had passed would have increased the number of signatures required for initiatives. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 03:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Massachusetts dates cannot be correct here
This article currently states that the state of Massachusetts had a poll tax between the years 1865 and 1890, this cannot be correct. Henry David Thoreau was famously imprisoned for refusing to pay a poll tax while living in the state of Massachusetts but he died in the year 1862 so Massachusetts obviously had a poll tax implemented earlier than the year 1865. In his essay Civil Disobedience, which was published in 1849, Thoreau says he was put in prison for not paying his poll tax over a period of six years (the day or year he was imprisoned is not mentioned). Based on this information the latest that Massachusetts could have first implemented a poll tax would have been 1843 but it was likely implemented much earlier than that so more research will have to be done to determine the actual date it was implemented. Jwsxyz (talk) 03:44, 2 March 2024 (UTC)