capitation taxes

Delaware only has three counties; Kent, Sussex, and New Castle. In many ways, the laws don't differ drastically from county to county. One difference is that Sussex County has a capitation tax. That's a type of tax that is imposed upon a person for being a resident of the county. School districts also require payment of a similar head tax upon people in Sussex County. The County tax is three dollars per person, and the school taxes are also fairly small sums.

One of the difficulties with a capitation tax is that you need to identify the people who owe the tax, and inform them that they need to pay it. The downstate schools and Sussex County are having problems locating people and collecting those taxes.

A reason for using a capitation tax in addition to relying upon a property tax is that some people don't own property. Taxing fairly means collecting from people who don't own property too. That's the main rationale behind this form of tax, and has been since the first of the capitation taxes was collected during medieval days.

While the effort to collect capitation taxes does earn more money than it loses, maybe it's time to stop the process. It's a lot easier to collect property taxes -- property doesn't move. And most people have to live somewhere, whether they own a home or rent. Given that landlords will usually pass along the cost of a property tax to their tenants, most people are already paying taxes for being residents of the County and of one of the school districts. Sometimes they just aren't paying it directly.

In addition to a practical argument against a capitation tax, I find myself agreeing with this observation on the subject from by Jean Jacques Rousseau:

Contributions levied on the people are two kinds; real, levied on commodities, and personal, paid by the head. Both are called taxes or subsidies: when the people fixes the sum to be paid, it is called subsidy; but when it grants the product of an imposition, it is called a tax. We are told in The Spirit of the Laws that a capitation tax is most suited to slavery, and a real tax most in accordance with liberty. This would be incontestable, if the circumstances of every person were equal; for otherwise nothing can be more disproportionate than such a tax; and it is in the observations of exact proportions that the spirit of liberty consists. But if a tax by heads were exactly proportioned to the circumstances of individuals, as what is called the capitation tax in France might be, it would be the most equitable and consequently the most proper for freemen.

Using a property tax goes a lot further towards proportioning a tax to "the circumstances of individuals."