Prologue

One of America's greatest judges famously observed that ‘taxes are what we pay for civilised society’, and from the earliest times English men and women were called on to pay for the costs of managing the state in an orderly way, providing an infrastructure of good government and defence. As the effective government of a state depended to a great extent on the condition of its finances, the state's power to tax its subjects was central to its relationship with them, and the law of tax its principal and voluminous formal expression. The imposition of a tax, whether novel or merely an increase in the rate or incidence, was always perceived and accepted as an act of considerable constitutional importance. It affirmed the power and legitimacy of the state. To tax was to govern, and, implicitly, to do so by right, and as such was an expression of sovereignty. In taxation, above all, the interests of the individual most closely and repeatedly came into direct conflict with those of central government. Tensions between the state and the subject in this respect were inevitable, and not merely because the payment of taxes, however worthy or necessary the object, was disliked by most and constituted a very real hardship to many. Tensions were deep seated for three reasons.