<P> A poll tax is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual . Although often associated with states of the former Confederacy, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin . Poll taxes had been a major source of government funding among the colonies which formed the United States . Poll taxes made up from one - third to one - half of the tax revenue of colonial Massachusetts . Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage collection of this tax revenue . Property taxes assumed a larger share of tax revenues as land values rose when population increases encouraged settlement of the American west . Some western states found no need for poll tax requirements; but poll taxes and payment incentives remained in eastern states, and some links to voter registration were modified following the American Civil War until court action following ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964 . </P> <P> Payment of a poll tax was a prerequisite to the registration for voting in a number of states until 1966 . The tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow laws . After the right to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a number of states enacted poll tax laws as a device for restricting voting rights . The laws often included a grandfather clause, which allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax . These laws, along with unfairly implemented literacy tests and extra-legal intimidation, achieved the desired effect of disenfranchising African - American and Native American voters, as well as poor whites . </P>

What is the purpose of a poll tax