Utz on Boz Among the Radicals: Charles Dickens and Tax Reform @UConnLaw

Stephen Utz, University of Connecticut School of Law, has published Boz Among the Radicals: Charles Dickens and Tax Reform at 2021 British Tax Review 221. Here is the abstract.

Taxes on consumption items necessary for subsistence burdened the British middle and workings classes heavily throughout the early nineteenth century. The Weekly True Sun urged the Whig government to replace the window tax, not with a house tax, but with an income tax, and urged taxpayers to refuse to pay the window tax. Charles Dickens transcribed the seditious libel trial of the True Sun editors when he was very young and later remembered the Whig indecision on tax policy in a strongly negative editorial of his own. This article describes how Dickens played a prominent role in tax reform that followed. Note: This material was first published by Thomson Reuters, trading as Sweet & Maxwell, 5 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AQ, in the British Tax Review as Boz Among the Radicals: Charles Dickens and Tax Reform, [2021] B.T.R., No.2, and is reproduced by agreement with the publishers.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.