Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
If any goods are imported, not mentioned in the book of rates, they are taxed at 4s:9¾d. for every twenty shillings value, according to the oath of the importer, that is, nearly at five subsidies, or five poundage duties. The book of rates is extremely comprehensive, and enumerates a great variety of articles, many of them little used, and, therefore, not well known.
It was called tonnage and poundage because the merchandise on which it was assessed was reckoned by weight, viz., the ton and the pound. A former king, Edward III., first assessed it to raise money to suppress piracy on the seas. He said it was reasonable that the merchandise protected should pay the expense of the protection, and in proper proportion. The Parliament in that day opposed this tax.
As far as you can possibly, pay ready money for everything you buy and avoid bills. Pay that money, too, yourself, and not through the hands of any servant, who always either stipulates poundage, or requires a present for his good word, as they call it. Never, from a mistaken economy, buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap; or from a silly pride, because it is dear.
Doyle says that the honest man at Smithfield had poundage of him as well as from the grazier, so that he acted in a double capacity.
First, and most ostensibly, to see to the levying of poundage in the little haven of Lynmouth, and farther up the coast, which was now becoming a place of resort for the folk whom we call smugglers, that is to say, who land their goods without regard to King's revenue as by law established.
The advances from the Treasury were to be repaid in half-yearly instalments; such instalments not to be less than four, or more than twenty; the tax by which they were to be repaid to be levied under grand jury presentments, according to the Poor Law valuation, and in the manner of the poor rate; the occupier paying the whole, but deducting from his landlord one-half the poundage rate of the rent to which he was liable in short, as under the Poor Law, the occupier was to pay one-half, and the landlord the other.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking