poll tax
a capitation tax, the payment of which is sometimes a prerequisite to exercise the right of suffrage.
Origin of poll tax
1- Also called head tax.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use poll tax in a sentence
Furthermore, a constitutional requirement demanded payment of three years' poll taxes six months before general elections.
Hallowed Heritage: The Life of Virginia | Dorothy M. TorpeyLikewise, his poll taxes are cancelled and annulled for the three years next preceding if he has an honorable discharge.
Hallowed Heritage: The Life of Virginia | Dorothy M. TorpeyPoll taxes were used as an extraordinary resource, as were the last subsidies, voted in 1663, and then for ever abandoned.
Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est—men who wear rubbers and pay poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents.
Strictly Business | O. HenryHow many upon the poll-taxes in England, do pay extraordinary rates, and how many at the level.
Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic | William Petty
British Dictionary definitions for poll tax
a tax levied per head of adult population
an informal name for (the former) community charge
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for poll tax
A tax required as a qualification for voting. After the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution extended the vote to blacks in 1870, many southern states instituted poll taxes to prevent blacks from voting. The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1964, prohibits poll taxes for federal elections.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Browse