Hypothecated tax
tax whose revenues are purportedly dedicated to a particular expenditure
The hypothecation of a tax (also known as the ring-fencing or earmarking of a tax) is the dedication of the revenue from a specific tax for a particular expenditure purpose. This approach differs from the classical method according to which all government spending is done from a consolidated fund.
History
Hypothecated taxes have a long history. One of the first examples of earmarking was ship money, the tax paid by English seaports used to finance the Royal Navy. Later, in the 20th century, the hypothecated tax began to be discussed by politicians in the United Kingdom. For example, the Vehicle Excise Duty from 1920 when earned revenues were used for the construction and maintenance of the roads, assigning 1p on the income tax directly to education in 1992, or giving £300 million per year from the revenues from taxes on the tobacco industry to help the fight against smoking-related diseases since 1999.
Types of hypothecated tax
The hypothecated tax can be divided into three groups based on the main characteristics. The emphasis can be put on the final use of the revenues, on the vastness of the area financed from the money earned or on the type of the tax. Each group then has two subsections. In the first case, we distinguish between strong and weak hypothecation.
“Hypothecated tax” enters the record as tax whose revenues are purportedly dedicated to a particular expenditure. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hypothecated, whose and revenues can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hypothecated tax” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.