Tax records can place someone in a certain location at a point in time, give you a glimpse into their finances, and provide lists of luxury items they owned.

Finding tax lists

Search tax lists

(Or click the Search tab > select Card Catalogue > select Court, Land, Wills, & Financial > select Tax Lists > click Search entire Tax Lists Category.)
 

On the Tax Lists page, enter information and click Search.

Tips

• There are three basic types of direct tax records (taxes paid from a person to the government): poll taxes, property taxes, and personal property or income taxes. All three tax types are sometimes found on the same record.
• Check the tax roll for people who share the last name of the person you’re looking for, since it may list family members who lived in the same area. When you’re not sure whether the people you find are related, research their names, looking for a connection.
• Research the tax type and year to find out who should and shouldn’t be on the tax list before drawing conclusions about someone's appearance in the records; for example, the age at which men were required to pay a poll tax changed multiple times. If you can't find someone in tax records after a certain year, they may have moved or no longer have been required to pay the tax. Check collection descriptions and descriptive information in publications for information about the tax records you’re searching.

Resources

Our database of London, England, Land Tax Records contains land tax records for various areas in London from 1692 through 1932. The land tax was introduced in England in 1692 to raise government revenue. Land tax records often list the parish, year, proprietor (property owner), and tenant.

The database Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices' Indentures contains registers of the money professionals paid in taxes for their apprentices’ indentures from 1710–1811. The dates record when the tax was paid and may not reflect the beginning or end of an apprenticeship. The records include the sum received, the professional’s name, the professional’s address, the trade, the apprentice’s name, and the date of the articles of apprenticeship.

Our collection of Ireland, Tithe Applotment Books contain the results of a unique land survey taken to determine the amount of tax payable by landholders to the Church of Ireland, the state church through 1869. This data set is a virtual census for pre-famine Ireland. These records contain the year of enumeration and the landholder’s name, county, parish, and townland. Not all parts of the country were surveyed.