Day-light robbery/ Window Tax- Explained

Imagine when you enter a house in England and the windows of the house look like the picture below, weird isn’t it? 

 

In England, a window tax was introduced in 1697 during the reign of William and Mary. One of their first acts on assuming the throne had been to abolish the hated hearth tax, brick- or stone-lined fireplace tax levied based on the number of a fireplace in a municipal area that had been imposed in 1662. However, England faced continual financial difficulties during their reign, caused for example by the war with France. To defray these costs, a tax was imposed in 1696 in the form of a tax on windows. ^[1] This tax was based on the number of windows one had in their house. It was intended to be a progressive tax in that houses with a smaller number of windows, initially, ten were subject to a 2 shilling house tax but exempt from the window tax.  Houses with more than ten windows were liable for additional taxes which increased in line with the number of windows.  The poorest, who were more likely to live in houses with fewer windows, were therefore in theory taxed less. In other words, if you had more than ten windows in your house you’d have to pay extra incrementally for each window after the ten. The interpretation of the tax was also very strict.  Since there was no definition of a window in any statute this led to the inclusion of even the smallest of openings in any wall as windows.

Although deeply unpopular, the tax survived until the mid-nineteenth century.  The negative effects of the lack of adequate light and ventilation were becoming so well documented that a popular campaign against the tax began to gain strength. A motion to repeal the tax failed by three votes in April 1850.  The tax was repealed in 1851. ^[2]