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Census
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The word is of Latin origin; during the Roman Republic,
the census was a list that kept track of all adult males fit for military service. The modern census is essential to international comparisons of any kind of statistics and censuses collect data on many attributes of the population, not just how many people they are, although population estimates remain an important function of the census. Recommendations of census topics, official classifications and even question wordings are available to coordinate international practice.[4] and facilitate the exchange of information on census. ...
The above is partially right as well as stupid in another regard.
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Ancient Israel
Censuses are mentioned in the Bible. God commands a flat tax to be paid with the census in Exodus 30:11-16 for the upkeep of the Tabernacle. The Book of Numbers is named after the counting of the Israelite population (in Numbers 1-4) according to the house of the Fathers after the exodus from Egypt. A second census was taken while the Israelite were camped in the plains of Moab, in Numbers 26.
King David performed a census that produced disastrous results (in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21). God used Satan to try King David (2 Samuel 24:1; 1 Chronicles 21:1), who then numbered the people out of pride.[20] His son, King Solomon, had all of the foreigners in Israel counted in 2 Chronicles 2:17.
The Gospel of Luke records Jesus being born during a census in Luke 2
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The word "census" originated in ancient Rome from the Latin word censere ("to estimate"). The census played a crucial role in the administration of the Roman Empire, as it was used to determine taxes. With few interruptions, it was usually carried out every five years.[26] It provided a register of citizens and their property from which their duties and privileges could be listed. It is said to have been instituted by the Roman king Servius Tullius in the 6th century BC,[27] at which time the number of arms-bearing citizens was counted at around 80,000.
Now we are getting somewhere.
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A
poll tax (head tax or capitation tax, per U.S. English usage)
is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount applied to an individual in accordance with the census (as opposed to a percentage of income). When a corv?e is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax (and vice versa, if a poll tax obligation can be worked off). Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments from ancient times until the 19th century. There have been several famous (and infamous) cases of head taxes in history, notably a tax formerly required for voting in parts of the United States that was often designed to disenfranchise poor people, including African Americans, Native Americans, and white people of non-English descent (e.g., the Irish). In the United Kingdom, poll taxes were levied by the governments of John of Gaunt in the 14th C., Charles II in the 17th and Margaret Thatcher in the 20th century.
The word poll is an English word that once meant "head" - and still does, in some specialised contexts - hence the name poll tax for a per-person tax. In the United States, however, the term has come to be used almost exclusively for a fixed tax applied to voting. Since "going to the polls" is a common idiom for voting (deriving from the fact that early voting involved head-counts), a new folk etymology has supplanted common knowledge of the phrase's true origins in America.
There we go. The purpose of a census is for purposes of TAXATION.
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Roman Empire
The ancient Romans imposed a tributum capitis (poll tax) as one of the principal direct taxes on the peoples of the Roman provinces (Digest 50, tit.15). In the Republican period, poll taxes were principally collected by private tax farmers (publicani), but from the time of Emperor Augustus, the collection were gradually transferred to magistrates and the senates of provincial cities. The Roman census was conducted periodically in the provinces to draw up and update the poll tax register.
The Roman poll tax fell principally on Roman subjects in the provinces, but not on Roman citizens. Towns in the provinces who possessed the Jus Italicum (enjoying the "privileges of Italy") were exempted from the poll tax. The 212 edict of Emperor Caracalla which formally conferred Roman citizenship on all residents of Roman provinces, did not however exempt them from the poll tax.
The Roman poll tax was deeply resented - Tertullian bewailed the poll tax as a "badge of slavery" - and it provoked numerous revolts in the provinces. Perhaps most famous is the Zealot revolt in Judaea of 66 CE. After the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, the Emperor imposed an extra poll tax on Jews throughout the empire, the fiscus judaicus, of two denari each.
The Italian revolt of the 720s, organized and led by Pope Gregory II, was originally provoked by the attempt of the Constantinople Emperor Leo III the Isaurian to introduce a poll tax in the Italian provinces of the Byzantine Empire in 722, and set in motion the permanent separation of Italy from the Byzantine empire. When King Aistulf of the Lombards availed himself of the Italian dissent and invaded the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751, one of his first acts was to institute a crushing poll tax of one gold solidus per head on every Roman citizen. Seeking relief from this burden, Pope Stephen II appealed to the Pepin the Short of the Franks for assistance, that led to the establishment of the Papal States in 756.
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Capitation and federal taxation
Main article: Taxation in the United States
The capitation clause of Article I of the United States Constitution, reads "[n]o capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken." Capitation here means a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per taxpayer.[5] Direct tax means a tax levied directly by the United States federal government on taxpayers, as opposed to a tax on events or transactions.[6] The United States government levied direct taxes from time to time during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It levied direct taxes on the owners of houses, land, slaves, and estates in the late 1790s but cancelled the taxes in 1802.
An income tax is neither a poll tax nor a capitation, as the amount of tax will vary from person to person, depending on each person's income. Until a United States Supreme Court decision in 1895, all income taxes were deemed to be excises (i.e., indirect taxes). The Revenue Act of 1861 established the first income tax in the United States, to pay for the cost of the American Civil War. This income tax was abolished after the war, in 1872. Another income tax statute in 1894 was overturned in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. in 1895, where the Supreme Court held that income taxes on income from property, such as rent income, interest income, and dividend income (but not income taxes on income from wages, employment, etc.) were to be treated as direct taxes. Because the statute in question had not apportioned income taxes on income from property by population, the statute was ruled unconstitutional. Finally, ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913 made possible modern income taxes, by removing the requirement of apportionment with respect to income taxes.[6]
It doesn't become clear until you link census with poll tax.
