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Popular Perceptions of Income Tax Law in the Nineteenth Century: A Local Tax Rebellion

Abstract The Exeter tax rebellion of 1871 is taken as a model to examine popular perceptions of income tax law at a time of national discontent. The discontent was with the administration of the tax rather than its substance. In a complex commercial society the statutory system of local lay Commissioners, possessing neither sufficient time nor expertise, was inadequate to make assessments or determine appeals. In practice the expert Crown official, the Surveyor, dominated the process, though the law gave him merely a supervisory role. The popular resentment of the Commissioners paradoxically confirmed the desire to retain that body as an independent buffer between the State and the taxpayer. The rebellion reflected the tensions of the age, illustrating the confidence of the Victorian middle class and its questioning of the traditional property-owning classes in the lay administration of justice.