I wonder what we would do today if suddenly we were asked to pay a tax on windows in our homes? I don’t think we would take kindly to that at all.

This Window Tax was introduced in 1696 in the reign of King William III of England. The country needed money and people resented the idea of personal income tax, our ancestors felt that divulging their private income was a gross intrusion into their privacy. So the Window Tax seemed like a fairer way, the richest people usually having the largest houses and the most windows would pay the most tax. Seems fair to me.

Cottages were exempt anyway, but poorer people were also able to avoid paying this tax. The tax had to be paid by whoever occupied the house, not necessarily the owner.

A lot of other people avoided paying the tax by simply blocking up any windows which took their total over 6, the maximum allowed untaxed.
Even today you can see houses in England and Scotland with these blocked up windows, they are usually painted black with white lines making the area look like a window at first sight.

There were quite a few where I used to live in rural Lincolnshire, England,
and in most areas where there were old buildings.

Of course there was the other side of this, the super-rich people built houses with, or added to those they had already, many more windows, they put them here, there and everywhere so they could be seen to be paying more tax than the merely ‘rich’ people. Talk about one-upmanship!!

Unfortunately it seems that none of the lists of people paying the Window Tax have survived, if they had they would have been another great source for anyone tracing family trees to find family names of ancestors who had paid [or not paid] the tax.

I am sure you have heard the phrase ‘daylight robbery’ – it is thought that this stemmed from the Window Tax where people did believe they were being taxed on daylight.

If I ever chance upon any details of people paying this Window Tax I will certainly show the details here. Or, if anyone else knows is any have survived, I really would appreciate knowing about them.