Salt Tax | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Salt is exuded in perspiration and other body excretions and must be replaced; therefore salt is absolutely necessary for human beings. Salt is also useful for preserving and flavoring food, but it is not evenly distributed throughout the world. For these reasons, most governments have seen salt as a suitable commodity to tax. Since salt in excess is unpleasant, consumption by the rich does not much exceed that of the poor, and thus a tax on salt is fundamentally a poll tax.

China has a long history of taxing salt. The large volumes of fresh water discharged by the major rivers make salt extraction from the diluted sea difficult. Over two millennia ago, salt was pumped from subterranean brine pools and then evaporated. These wells became controlled by the Chinese Board of Revenue. By 900 CE the salt tax became the most important item of government revenue. This situation continued until China's administrative collapse in the seventeenth century and was revived in the early twentieth century, under foreign pressure, to repay foreign loans. In general, although burdensome to poor people, the Chinese salt taxes were not high. Typically it took two days of a peasant's wages to meet the family's salt needs for a year.

India also has a long history of salt taxation. Chandra Gupta, who ruled much of India from 324 to 301

BCE, imposed a salt tax. The Mughals taxed salt from the sixteenth century until they were usurped by the British. Generally the tax was relatively low.

In 1765 severe taxation of salt in India was initiated by Robert Clive, governor of Bengal, as a private monopoly. In 1780 Warren Hastings, governor-general, brought the tax under government control. Thereafter successive administrators consolidated tax collection and expanded the tax base as the British spread across India.

Before the level of salt taxation was almost equalized across British India in 1879, it was much higher in the Bengal presidency than in Madras or Mumbai (Bombay). At the beginning it cost a peasant about two months' wages to provide yearly salt for his family; by 1879 it was nearer one month's wages. To stop untaxed salt coming in from the princely states, Bengal was enclosed by a customs line 4,030 kilometers (2,500 miles) long, much of it formed by an impenetrable thorn hedge.

After 1879 until the end of British rule, wage inflation gradually eroded the severity of the salt tax. Nevertheless in 1930 Mahatma Gandhi protested against the unjust tax. He and his followers marched to the sea to illegally gather salt. This and their subsequent imprisonment were key episodes in the fight for independence, when the salt tax was abolished.

Moxham, Roy. (2001) The Great Hedge of India. London: Constable.

Multhauf, Robert P. (1978) Neptune's Gift. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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