Lan Tax Assessments

In 1692 the British government instituted a scheme to increase revenue which came to be known as the land tax. The laws changed several times over the years until the tax was finally repealed in 1963. The tax was administered locally and original records will usually be located at the County Record Office. From 1780 to 1832, a copy of the Land Tax Assessment was placed in the quarter session records. The Clerks of the Peace used the Land Tax Assessments to determine a person’s electoral rights until 1832.

The Land Tax Assessments can be useful for genealogists and family historians. It provides an annual list of proprietors and, in theory, the names of the actual occupiers in each parish. Because the list is annual, arrival and departure dates of an individual or family can sometimes be tracked by examining consecutive years of land tax assessments. It can also be an indicator of inheritance, and thus, death of an individual. You can often differentiate between various pieces of property by the amount of the tax assessed. Persons with a long-term lease or copyhold may be named as the proprietor. The economic status of an ancestor in comparison with their neighbours can be inferred from the tax list. Unfortunately, not all the records have survived.

Their survival rate is low for the first 90 years that the tax was collected. From 1780 to 1832, the survival rate is much more uniform.

Post-1832 assessments contain incomplete lists of owners and occupiers.

Names in the tax lists are usually male household heads not connected in any way with family members. This increases the risk of getting the wrong person. If a widow remarried, her property might be listed in the name of her new husband.

The names of proprietors may have been out of date.

In 1798, the government began allowing the tax to be exonerated with a lump sum payment equal to fifteen years of the annual tax. As part of the 1798 assessment, parishes were ordered to file an extra copy with the government so they could compile a uniform assessment for every parish in England and Wales. For more information on the 1798 assessment, see National Land Tax Assessment.