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A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue.
Poll taxes are regressive, meaning the higher someone's income is, the lower the tax is as a proportion of income: for example, a $100 tax on an income of $10,000 is a 1% tax rate, while $100 tax on a $500 income is 20%. Its acceptance or "neutrality" depends on the balance between the tax demanded and the resources of the population.
Still, efforts at the Congressional level to abolish the poll tax continued. A 1939 bill to abolish the poll tax in federal elections was tied up by the Southern Bloc, lawmakers whose long tenure in office from a one-party region gave them seniority and command of numerous important committee chairmanships.
Poll tax, also called a head tax, is a fixed tax that must be paid by each person. Fiscus Judaicus, was a tax that Jews were required to pay in the Roman Empire; Jizya is a tax paid by non-Muslims in a Muslim state. Compare to Zakat. Leibzoll was tax that Jews were required to pay in Medieval Europe. Temple tax was a Roman tax used to pay for ...
Poll Tax payment prohibited from being used as a condition for voting in federal elections by the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [citation needed] 1965. Protection of voter registration and voting for racial minorities, later applied to language minorities, is established by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. [11]
The poll tax mechanism varied on a state-by-state basis; in Alabama, the poll tax was cumulative, meaning that a man had to pay all poll taxes due from the age of twenty-one onward in order to vote. In other states, poll taxes had to be paid for several years before being eligible to vote. Enforcement of poll tax laws was patchy.
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The Internal Revenue Service administers all U.S. federal tax laws on domestic activities, except those taxes administered by TTB. IRS functions include: Processing federal tax returns (except TTB returns), including those for Social Security and other federal payroll taxes; Providing assistance to taxpayers in completing tax returns