Lloyd Alter @ Treehugger.com writes approvingly of an out of date idea – the window tax:
Writing in the Financial Times, Tim Harford, AKA “the Undercover Economist” describes the English tax, introduced in 1696 and lasting until 1851, that was charged on the number of windows in a home, unlike the property taxes of today that are based on value of the property.
The details of the tax varied across the centuries but with the broad theme that the more windows your house had, the more tax you had to pay. At first glance, the tax seems clever, even brilliant. Rich people had larger houses, and so paid more tax. Windows are easy to count from outside the premises, so the tax was easy to assess. Poor people didn’t own large houses, so they weren’t affected by the tax. And the number of windows in a house doesn’t change, so the tax was impossible to avoid.
And it is brilliant. Dare I say that like the windows, it is totally transparent- everyone can see it, if you have a window (which is a big energy hole in the wall) you pay the tax. But Harford says it was “wrong, wrong, wrong” because people adapted their houses accordingly reducing their tax.
There are a couple of problems here:
- Humans are not nocturnal – we need sunlight in order to be healthy, and while it may be convenient to suggest we should all be outside as much as possible, that’s not going to cut it in the real world. Those of us with SAD are in particular trouble, and using special UV lighting when a window could bring in the same light without the associated electric bill seems … ungreen.
- Using the taxation system for social engineering has a long history of going awry and engendering resentment in the populace.
- The taxation system exists to provide funding to the government sector, and a predictable fund flow is important for planning purposes. As Harford notes, folks adapted – and the flow of funds dried up.
- Such a blunt taxation instrument ignores, and even discourages, innovation that could render windows much less of an energy drain. For example, this solar advance [add link] might prove to render the energy cost of windows trivial, or even negative.
As a historical note, it’s in the same class as taxing closets – an interesting look into the minds of folks from centuries ago. But I find the argument to return it to be unconvincing.
