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The Failure of the First Income Tax: A Tale of Commercial Tax Evaders?

ABSTRACT This article constitutes a re-examination of the financial failure of the first income tax in Britain, introduced in 1799 in order to address the rising cost of the French revolutionary wars. In accounting for this failure, the existing literature has focused largely on failings in the administration of the tax, often blaming, for example, its emphasis on local responsibility for tax collection, and its reliance on the honesty of its contributors. This article furthers these interpretations by highlighting that such issues were particularly problematic in their application to the commercial sector of society. It argues that the preferential treatment of commercial interests in the substance of the tax, on account of their privileged position in the political sphere, led to the establishment of a culture of commercial evasion. The evidence for this is examined at length, through both detailed analysis of the yield of the tax, as well as the attitudes of contemporaries evident in the literature at the time. This analysis ultimately leads to the conclusion that commercial evasion of the first tax played a pivotal, and hitherto underplayed, role in the financial underperformance of the tax.