Quoting John Hasler (jhasler@newsguy.com): > David Wright writes: > > In the UK, tomas's tax would be called a "poll tax".. > > "Poll" once meant "head". Indeed. But in Britain, the term is politically overloaded, a touchstone of all that is bad (for a large proportion of the population). No headline writer would dream of writing Head Tax when they can scream Poll Tax. Poll tax is the idiomatic expression, that's all. Cheers, David.