Everything about the Window Tax totally explained
The
window tax was a
glass tax which was a significant social, cultural, and architectural force in the kingdoms of
England,
Scotland and then
Great Britain during the
17th and
18th centuries. Some houses from the period can be seen to have bricked-up windows, as a result of the tax.
Details
The tax was introduced under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money in
1696 under King
William III and was designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of
income tax. At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because they believed that the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable government intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty. In fact the first British income tax wasn't introduced until the late 18th century and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 19th century.
When the window tax was introduced, it consisted of two parts: a flat-rate house tax of 2 shillings per house and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten windows. Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid a total of four shillings, and those above twenty windows paid eight shillings. The number of windows that incurred tax was changed to seven in 1766 and eight in 1825. The flat-rate tax was changed to a variable rate, dependent on the property value, in 1778. People who were ineligible for church or poor rates, for reasons of poverty, were exempt from the window tax. Window tax was relatively unintrusive and easy to assess. The bigger the house, the more windows it was likely to have, and the more tax the occupants would pay. Nevertheless, the tax was unpopular, because it was seen by some as a tax on "light and air".
In Scotland this Window Tax was imposed by
William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s in the financial district in
Edinburgh and to this day "Pitt's Pictures" (blacked out windows with white painted cross-frames) can be seen in
Charlotte Square.
A similar tax existed in
France from 1798 to 1926, the
Doors And Windows Tax.
The richest families in the kingdoms used this tax to set themselves apart from the merely rich. They would commission a country home or a manor house whose
architecture would make the maximum possible use of windows. In extreme cases they'd have windows built over structural walls. It was an exercise in ostentation, spurred by the window tax.
The tax wasn't repealed until
1851, when it was replaced by
House Duty.
Origin of the phrase "daylight robbery"
Some allege that the term "daylight robbery" originated from this tax. However, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase daylight robbery was first recorded in 1949, many years after the "window tax", which places doubt upon the claim.. However, the phrase originates from at least 1916, when it was mentioned in
Harold Brighouse’s play
Hobson's Choice, and it should be remembered that the Oxford English Dictionary only records the first provable written instance of the phrase that its etymologists can find, so the phrase might have been used in everyday speech before hand, or even in published writing.
Contemporary references
It has been suggested that a luxury tax on window size could make new houses more energy efficient, the argument being that more efficient windows only encourage people to install bigger windows by the principle of
waste homeostasis.
Computer reference
The term is also used in computer market (sometimes referenced as "Microsoft tax"), claiming that all major computers vendors, sell their products with
Microsoft Windows OEM pre-installed, and
Linux users will pay for those licenses and can't buy a computer without paying to Microsoft. However, there have been recent reports of Linux users using the terms of the Microsoft
End User License Agreement to obtain a refund of this "tax".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Window Tax'.
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