Tax after the dust settles

You may be wondering at London Period buildings, or you may even be looking at properties to buy and rent and wonder why windows have been bricked up. Well in 1696 The Window Tax, based on the number of windows in a house, was first introduced by William III to cover revenue lost by the clipping of coinage. It was a banded tax according to the number of windows in the house. For example, for a house in 1747 with ten to 14 windows, the tax was 6d per window; it increased to 9d with more windows. Not long after its introduction, people bricked up their windows to avoid paying the tax.

Dubbed 'Daylight robbery' the tax was repealed in 1851 after pressure from doctors and others who argued that lack of light was a source of ill health. See below a receipt from 1755

At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable governmental intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty. In fact the first permanent British income tax was not introduced until 1842, and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 20th century. When the window tax was introduced, it consisted of two parts: a flat-rate house tax of two shillings per house (equivalent to ￡13.98 in 2019), and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten in the house. Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid an extra four shillings (equivalent to ￡27.96 in 2019), and those above twenty windows paid an extra eight shillings (equivalent to ￡55.91 in 2020).

According to the FT, Economists have predicted that the UK deficit for the current financial year could exceed ￡300bn because of the cost of the government’s rescue schemes for businesses and households, plus lost tax revenues.

Would there be an ingenious tax like the 1696 Window Tax to block the black hole?

June 2020