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Poll Tax
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A poll tax, head tax, or capitation is a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income). When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax (and vice versa, if a poll tax obligation can be worked off). Such taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times into the 19th century, but are not any more. There are several famous cases of poll taxes in history, notably a tax formerly required for voting in parts of the United States that was often designed to disfranchise poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and whites of non-British descent. In the United Kingdom, such taxes were levied by John of Gaunt and Margaret Thatcher in the 14th and 20th centuries respectively.
The word poll is an English word that once meant "head", hence the name poll tax for a per-person tax. However, in the United States, the term has come to be used almost exclusively for a fixed tax applied to voting. Since "going to the polls" is a common idiom for voting (deriving from the fact that early voting involved head-counts), a new folk etymology has supplanted common knowledge of the phrase's true origins in America.
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