Eighteenth-Century English Debates on a Dog Tax

Abstract

A B S T R A C T. A tax on dogs was passed in 1796 because it seemed to address both the government's need for revenue and other serious social and economic problems. Arguments for and against a dog tax throughout the eighteenth century engaged with issues not raised in discussions of other kinds of taxes because of the unique place of dogs in human society ; positions on the question of a dog tax depended largely on assumptions about the purpose that dogs served, or ought to serve. Proponents often argued that a dog tax would decrease the population of nuisance dogs, whilst also preventing poaching. Other tax advocates presented a dog tax as a luxury tax, but there was no agreement about which kinds of dogs were luxuries, and which were necessities that should be exempt from the tax. By the time a bill was debated in parliament in 1796, the terms of the debate had shifted because of new attitudes toward animals. The tax that was ultimately passed largely ignored the interests of the primary advocates of a tax throughout the century, instead treating the pets of the poor as necessities that merited exemption.

Prosthesis for the body and for the soul: the origins of guide dog provision for blind veterans in interwar Germany

“…15 Moreover, evidence that guide dogs had a different legal status from that of domestic pets can be found in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century British tax regulations, which exempted the owners of guide dogs from paying dog tax. 16 The earliest surviving description of a systematic method of guide dog training was published in 1819 by Johann Wilhelm Klein, the director of the Institute for the Blind in Vienna. Established in 1804, this organization's mission was identical to that of Valentin Haüy's trendsetting Paris Blind School founded 20 years earlier: to promote blind people's integration into wider society through education.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

“…William Pitt agreed with the principle of the proposal but thought that the law should distinguish between the wealthy and the poor. The resultant tax, as Tague notes, permitted the poor to keep their dogs while imposing a levy of 5s. on the hunting dogs of the landed elite, thus appeasing the most vocal of protesters while accruing valuable revenue for the state.…”