On this day, 9 January 1799, Britain introduced its first ‘temporary’ income tax. Workers have been vexed ever since, writes Eliot Wilson

It was the English playwright Christopher Bullock who first wrote in 1716 “’tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes”. It is as true today as it was three centuries ago, but the taxes Bullock had in mind looked very different to the ones we grudgingly pay today.

For most of the 18th century, the British government relied for its revenue on direct taxes on wealth, and a range of indirect taxation on consumption.

Direct taxation was imposed in two main ways. In England, the Subsidy Act 1670, refined by subsequent legislation in 1688, 1692 and 1697, provided for a land tax based on a property’s open market rental value. The Parliament of Scotland had brought in a broadly similar system in 1667. Article IX of the Act of Union 1707 brought the two systems together under the new Parliament of Great Britain.

The second form of direct taxation, again a rough-and-ready attempt at taxation on the basis of wealth, was a window tax. In England, the Taxation (No. 3) Act 1695 imposed a flat charge for each house and an additional variable tax based on the number of windows above 10. After the Union, it was standardised across Great Britain.

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