King William the third introduced a window tax into his Kingdom in 1696. Income tax was not in existence then as the populace considered details of their own income to be private and not a matter for the King to worry about. The window tax was introduced to get around this problem. Read on to discover more about the historical facts about an old taxation system on windows in the United Kingdom.
To find a way to tax them based on some sort of wealth measure, the King decided to tax his subjects depending on the size of house they inhabited. Each householder was to pay a flat rate of 2 shillings. Then in addition to this, each person with more than 10 windows in their dwelling would pay extra tax.
If the house had between ten and twenty windows, then this extra tax was 4 shillings and anything over twenty windows had to pay eight shillings. Later, as the king wanted to increase the tax, he reduced the minimum number of windows to be taxed from ten to seven. This was further changed in 1825 to eight windows.
Poor subjects who were eligible for the church's charity could claim an exemption. This was irrespective of the number of windows their dwelling contained.
The unpopularity of the tax meant that in the 17th and 18th centuries, many people with larger houses bricked up their extra windows. It is possible they did this to try to get around paying the window tax. William Pitt the Younger of Scotland took up this tax in the 1780s. To avoid paying this extra tax, many Scots are thought to have painted over their existing windows. These painted over windows can still be seen by visitors to Edinburgh's Charlotte Square. These are known as Pitt's pictures.
Many of the more wealthy families of the time were thought to show off their wealth by having houses of many windows built. They may even have had extra windows put in were walls existed to prove that they could afford to pay the tax.
To find a way to tax them based on some sort of wealth measure, the King decided to tax his subjects depending on the size of house they inhabited. Each householder was to pay a flat rate of 2 shillings. Then in addition to this, each person with more than 10 windows in their dwelling would pay extra tax.
If the house had between ten and twenty windows, then this extra tax was 4 shillings and anything over twenty windows had to pay eight shillings. Later, as the king wanted to increase the tax, he reduced the minimum number of windows to be taxed from ten to seven. This was further changed in 1825 to eight windows.
Poor subjects who were eligible for the church's charity could claim an exemption. This was irrespective of the number of windows their dwelling contained.
The unpopularity of the tax meant that in the 17th and 18th centuries, many people with larger houses bricked up their extra windows. It is possible they did this to try to get around paying the window tax. William Pitt the Younger of Scotland took up this tax in the 1780s. To avoid paying this extra tax, many Scots are thought to have painted over their existing windows. These painted over windows can still be seen by visitors to Edinburgh's Charlotte Square. These are known as Pitt's pictures.
Many of the more wealthy families of the time were thought to show off their wealth by having houses of many windows built. They may even have had extra windows put in were walls existed to prove that they could afford to pay the tax.
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