Here’s a little bit of Hawaii history, found among my dad’s papers after his death in 2010.
It’s a receipt for my father’s payment of Hawaii’s poll tax in 1941.
That $5 paid in 1941 would be worth $93.47 in 2021, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator.
The poll tax was not eliminated until 1943, when the legislature passed a new 2% payroll tax on wages, salaries, and dividends.
Here’s a nugget of history from a story in the Honolulu Record, a labor-focused newspaper published by Koji Ariyoshi, in 1957.
The poll tax, which swallowed up the formerly separate road and school taxes, dates back to the feudal days of the Kingdom. Many are the stories of the pilikia poor Hawaiians had in finding the few dollars to pay it in the earliest years. The poll tax was levied on every adult male regardless of his income, and as one expert says, it “offends every standard of good taxation.” Still, it accounted for one-eighth of Hawaii’s revenues in 1902. It had fallen to be a mere nuisance tax, bringing in only 2 per cent, when it was abolished in 1943.
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To clarify. A poll tax is a per capita tax, not a tax paif in order to vote. The total needed revenues are divided up among tax payers without refereence to ability to pay or circumstance. The precedent, in Hawaii, was the first actual tax ever levied, in 1825. Which required every adult to provide so many “piculs” of sandalwood in order to pay off the personal debts of Kamehameha the second and the Ali’i.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax
I noticed Borthwick was the Tax Commissioner wonder if it is the same family as the funeral home
You know what they say about death and taxes!
😀
Wonder how today’s insane tax repression will be viewed in the future? Water, Sewer and Storm Drainage on top of Property Tax, car registration fees on the City side alone.
With the GETax Pyramid of State Taxes over 15% in total.
And massive payroll taxes.
This measly 2% tax was a pittance. No worker today can image a paycheck so large. Old Voting rights tax has been long replaced by enormous tax percentages!
One things that the poor enjoyed on 1941, during the War years was, The Honolulu Rent Control Act. That established a maximum rental price.
Not just the poll tax. The property tax after the Great Mahele. Two ways of stripping low-income Hawaiians and giving both election and land ownership advantages to non-Hawaiians. I’m always amazed that white historians praise the Mahele as giving land to Hawaiians. Sure … so they would default on their taxes and lose the land, which was sold off to white businessmen.
LAND::So later, politicians controlled zoning, lawyers repped the land owners and developers, these same guys jumped into the land “huis” and at he same time. lawyers became the legislators, the most prominent politicians functioned this way. Lots of land sales churning and churning profits for investments into more land speculation including the Big Island lava land were we are indemnifying the unfortunate owners who got burned out. This is a combobulated view but you get the idea, Enjoy your mortgage if you have one.