AT A HOUSE PARTY recently, I had the opportunity to push a distinguished economist into a corner of the kitchen and lecture him about the ideal property tax. “The bathroom is the key,” I told him. “It’s not a rural versus urban thing. I know a house in Tipperary that has more tubs than your average gaff in Shrewsbury Road.”
“It fulfils all the criteria,” I ploughed on. “It’s simple to calculate. You just send an inspector into every house and apartment to count the loos and baths and wash basins, not forgetting the jacuzzis and those French things and making sure to check the back gardens for outside toilets. Then it’s simple arithmetic. So many points for a jakes, so many for a shower and so on. The lads in the Revenue could rustle up a list in no-time and a few hundred officials could be gainfully employed.”
“I need more Chardonnay,” he pleaded, as he fled.
“Check out Northern Ireland”, I shouted. “Up there, they go for individual assessment. Every house, the reasonable price on the open market, conservatories, bus stops, scenic views, patios, equestrian paddocks, for God’s sake.”
The first house tax in Ireland was imposed by the newly restored parliament in 1662 in imitation of a similar tax by the English parliament for the support of King Charles II.
“Every dwelling, other house, or edifice” was to be charged two shillings, payable in two instalments, on Lady Day, March 25th and St Michael’s Day, September 29th “for every hearth, other place used for firing, and stove”.
People with houses worth less than 8 shillings per annum or occupying lands worth less than 20 shillings per annum or owning property worth less than £4 per annum were to be exempt.
The tax was abolished in England by King William and Queen Mary in 1689 but maintained in Ireland. Information about its working during the 18th century is scarce, probably because it didn’t affect most of the population.
It seems that taxation in this country was a relatively light burden for most of the 18th century. Duties were applied to a variety of imported goods, including alcohol, silks and molasses, and in the latter years of the century grocers, hawkers, tanners, chandlers, goldsmiths and other tradesmen were forced to buy licences, but the claim by an anonymous pamphleteer in 1731 that the only things left in Ireland to tax were swearing, gambling and drunkedness was an exaggeration.
In his Tour of Ireland (1780), Arthur Young noted that taxation averaged 6s-8d per head in Ireland versus £1-9-0 in England and he marvelled that there was “no poor rate, no tax on candles, soap or servants, and only half a wheel tax”.
The historian, James Anthony Froude took a different view when he observed that “the Administration of Ireland possessed a single merit. If it did nothing, it cost little”.
In the 1790s, the application of the hearth tax was reformed by a number of Acts. A sliding scale of charges was introduced, inspectors were permitted to enter houses between 8am and sunset, and fines were imposed on householders who falsely claimed that their chimneys were permanently blocked.
In England, the hearth tax had been replaced in 1695 by a tax payable at two shillings per window on houses with six to 10 windows and at higher rates for more windows. There were recurrent arguments with the inevitable inspectors about what constituted a window as distinct from a hole in the wall. More seriously, there were claims that it encouraged householders to close off windows or not to install windows, to the detriment of residents’ health.
Nevertheless, in Ireland, in May 1799, the chancellor of the exchequer, Isaac Corry, introduced the tax as “a temporary” measure to finance the French war. As in Britain, there would be a rising scale of charges up to 25 windows, a decreasing charge thereafter and a low charge on windows numbering more than 180. Windows in alms houses and Trinity College and windows used by weavers to give light to their looms were exempted. To prevent tax evasion, windows existing in January 1799 were counted, even if they had been recently blocked up.
The “temporary” nature of the tax was soon forgotten but it was widely disliked. In 1819, the Cork MP, Christopher Hely-Hutchinson told the House of Commons that “the present and widespread malignity of typhus fever which has of late years committed such ravages in Ireland is in a great degree to be attributed to it because the poorer orders who are unable to pay it are forced to shut up the windows and exclude the air”.
As it is unlikely that many of the “poorer orders” in Cork or elsewhere had more than six windows, his claim may have been exaggerated, but the hearth and window taxes were abolished in Ireland in 1822.
Ironically, a British excise duty on glass was extended to Ireland in 1825 and many householders were then unable to glaze any windows they had.
One other semi-national property tax, Minister’s Money, survived in Dublin and seven other cities and towns from the 1665 until 1859. It was the urban equivalent of a tithe and was payable to the clergy of the Established Church annually on Christmas Day. As the basis of the tax, once decided for a house, wasn’t updated until the 1830s, it gradually became irrelevant.
In 1898, the Local Government (Ireland) Act replaced a number of household taxes including the county cess payable to the grand juries and the poor law rates payable to the boards of guardians with a single charge payable to the new county and borough councils.
“The rates” as the charge became known were abolished in respect of private houses in 1978. Five years later, the Residential Property Tax was introduced. It was abandoned in 1997, much to the annoyance of my economist friend and many of his colleagues.
I suspect that they look north with some envy.