Hello, Honandal2, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
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It would be helpful if you could provide a bit more information on the books you cited and better still, the specific page. The template cite book is a useful aid to ensuring that you get all the important items of data included. Let me know if you need any help. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
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Please help me with...
I have been working on part of an article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 under the heading Why the UK income tax year begins on 6 April:
Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April
Someone else has edited the citation for my first quotation from the Alexander Phillip book. I like the way this has put the author's name and book title below the quotation and I'd like to know how to do this. I am less happy about the way the reference now includes explanatory material about the definition of the financial year because it looks too dense. I would prefer to deal with that separately. I have spent some time trying to understand how the citation works without much success. Could you please tell how to get the citation of the author and names of the work to appear below while at the same time excluding the explanation about the financial buried in the citation?
Regards
Alan O'Brien
Honandal2 ( talk) 14:10, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. I attach below the first paragraph under the heading together with the quote which follows. My query concerns note 18 which also incorporates a note d. There is nothing I object to but, as I said, I'd like to know how to do a reference to an author and book in the way it appears below the quotation and I will look at your suggestions. I'd also prefer not to have the explanation of the financial year embedded in the reference. This is the passage and I have bolded the relevant bit which is right at the end:
Several theories have been proposed for the odd beginning of the British tax year on 6 April. The one most commonly found on British tax websites stems from a book published in 1921 by Alexander Philip.[18] In a brief passage Philips says that eleven days were added to the old tax year which began on 25 March. Then from 1753 until 1799 the tax year began on 5 April. He goes on to say that in 1800 a further day was added so that thereafter the tax year began on 6 April. The extra day was added, he says, because 1800 had 366 days in the Julian calendar but only 365 in the Gregorian calendar. He does not say why it was necessary to add another day. Further, he continues, the tax year was not changed when a thirteenth Julian leap day was skipped in 1900, so the tax year in the United Kingdom still begins on 6 April.[19] The passage is:
"A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date."[d] — Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement[18]
A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date.
— Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement [1]
Many thanks for this. Most helpful. Could you tell what the purpose of the colon at the start of a paragraph is for?
Thanks again. As you say, trying to grapple with the material you are writing is hard enough and there isn't a lot brain power left to absorb the technicalities of Wikipedia. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A ( talk) 14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
References
You may notice that edited your quotes in Calendar New Style Act, leaving only a cryptic edit note. It was a cockup, not a conspiracy: I've explained at the Act talk page. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I will study this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:9FA:509B:A596:E02A ( talk) 15:30, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
There are many many articles on Wikipedia that need the kind of researched improvement that you made to the Calendar Act. I too found citations hard work at the beginning and have collected miscellaneous tips at User:John Maynard Friedman#My useful links: feel free to raid. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Finally, note how I signed off each new point, although I have made a number of distinct points in this one session. That makes it easier for anyone replying to be clear which point they are addressing. I also created new sections, for much the same reason.-- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A (
talk)
14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I will try to remember to do this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A ( talk) 14:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
You may notice that I tarted up the George III citations. It took me years to figure out how to do that, so I suggest you continue to cite in the simple way that you've been doing and leave it to me to snazz them up. Actually the only aspect really worth having is the ability to give the URL of a specific page in a book. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:36, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Read all about it here: Help:Your first article. Also, WP:SPLIT. Good luck! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:32, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Hi! Sorry about forgetting (again!) to use the four tildes. Thanks for the ping information. Another thing I didn't know! I wasn't sure whether the ping stuff should come right at the start of the line or after the tildes. I drafted the revised section on the income tax year in a sandbox but then copied into the same place in the article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 which implemented the move to the Gregorian calendar. I would be very grateful for any comments you have but I hesitate to trouble you again. I revised the section because a couple of other people criticised it. They said it lacked the Wiki style and was unclear. Honandal2 ( talk) 15:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
... so the national accounts continued to be made up to end on the Old Style quarter-days of 5 January, 5 April, 5 July and 10 October. [2] page needed
References
Hi, I don't know if this is a help or a hindrance so you might want to experiment in your sandbox first.
But I suspect it may be safer than citing a google page? -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
FYI, I have raised a challenge at Template should not have default values (it was this regression to a default that sent you to the Scottish Act). You don't need to do anything but the way I used nowiki to explain my point may be of interest if you have nothing more pressing on your time. Also, I spotted the reason for 1896 being displayed so often: poor design. I don't speak template-ish, otherwise I would change the output so that it displayed as
but best to focus on one thing at a time and the current practice of substituting something arbitrary for missing data is by far the more serious issue. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:04, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
References
When you have nothing better to do, you can find a coherent version jof what I was trying and failing to explain, at Help:Wikitext, which covers nowiki among other interesting nitty-gritty items. I recommend the help:cheatsheet article linked from there too.
Just to satisfy your curiousity, it is not something you need to give any priority to. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Did you raise a query about giving authority for the time at which a Bill became law before 1793? I have tried to deal with this but it has led to a lengthy explanation. I had hoped that a link to the 1793 Act would do because that explains the old procedure. I don't mind giving a fuller explanation but I am conscious that some may not like it! Honandal2 ( talk) 15:49, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
In general, I don't like wp:Harvard referencing, especially when it is embedded in the text (Friedman, 2020) like that. It has to be done in paper documents but not when hypertext is available. There is a rolling debate on the subject in Wikipedia, I won't go into the detail unless you really want it. But it is very useful, though, when you want to cite the same book multiple times – putting almost exactly the same thing in ref tags is tiresome to write and tiresome for later editors because of the risk of mistaking one instance of the citation for another. So you will see that I changed the multiple citations of Cheney to use template:sfn. I'm not suggesting you do any, just letting you know what I'm up to [but if you do want to do it, let me know and I'll try to give you one of my impenetrable explanations 😎 ].
By the way, did you know about "View history" at the top of the editing window? V useful to see what has changed (and by whom) since the last time you were here. Also, if you have multiple changes to the same section, use "Show preview" rather than "Publish changes" to check each change as you do it, then "Publish changes" when all done.
Article is shaping up nicely now: think we may be well on the way to achieving WP:Good article status! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:52, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Yes the technique you used on Cheney is really neat! I have missed the talk page for the article and I don't know how to access it. Can you point me in the right direction? Honandal2 ( talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
talk:article name
, for example
Talk:Easter Act 1928. You can go directly to the talk page by typing that in the search box at the far right of the second row of the Wikipedia 'banner' (window heading).Article
and Talk
. That "talk" is a link to the article talk page: click on it just go there or right click to open it in a new tab if you don't want to lose your place in the original article.Read / Edit / View history / ☆
. Then whenever you check your watchlist (top row of banner, RHS), you will see any changes in your watched articles or their talk-pages since you last looked.I'd also welcome advice on links to Wikipedia articles. I have just been expanding the section on amendments to the Calendar Act and inserted links to the relevant Wikepedia articles. All the links are "bad". I did the insertion in the same way as for external web pages, which I gather is not the right way. Honandal2 ( talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
References
Annoyingly, after all time spent searching Google Books looking for records of Acts of Parliament, I've just found this source
I thought perhaps you might find it useful when researching your next big contribution! It would be a shame to let it go to waste.
-- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 23:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
As I believe it was you who wrote that section, I won't bother putting this on the talk page. Before I hid it behind a comment envelope, the section Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Eleven days added to prevent loss of tax? said that two editions of the 1798 Act exist, but the URLs provided are identical. Shurely shome mishtake? (Private Eye, passim). -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Do you have a copy of Poole? It is being suggested at the article talk page as a source to clear up the misapprehension that the change was "smuggled past" the CoE. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 08:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
The principal parliamentary debate of Chesterfield's bill took place in the House of Lords on 18 March 1751, with seventy-three bishops and peers present to hear Macclesfield and Chesterfield explain the measure. Two of the three main components of the Act required little explanation. The commencement of the official year on 1 January instead of 25 March was a convenience in line with common practice, with no real ideological implications. The new Easter, more surprisingly, did not feature in public debate, perhaps because few people understood how Easter worked anyway. Care was taken, however, to defuse the issue. The papal origins of the calendar were glossed over, and whilst the involvement of British experts was trumpeted, that of the Roman Catholic mathematician Father Charles Walmesley was hushed up. Further to conceal the Roman connection, a peculiarly British system for determining the date of Easter was drawn up to be inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, different from the Gregorian in execution but identical in effect: "the papal calendar with the papal moon omitted", as a later writer put it. [de Morgan.] All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers.
https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/149/1/95/1460442?redirectedFrom=fulltext
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I had not been following the other discussion. The expression "smuggled past" is ambiguous. A smuggler hopes to beat the Customs by entirely concealing his activities. This is not what happened here: Chesterfield & Co knew Bishops sat in the House of Lords and would be aware of the Bill. I took "smuggled past" to mean something different, namely, that the real Catholic nature of the Easter reform was obscured by clever spin which persuaded Archbishop Herring that this was a technical change based on purely British scientific research. This is what I take Poole to be saying in his book and in the article I quoted : "All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers". I attach below an extract from Chapter 8 of the book, page 115 onwards, which gives some more detail:
… Davall (Counsel who drafted the Bill) approached him (Archbishop Herring) tactfully. He began by soliciting the Archbishop’s opinion on the uncontroversial question of how the eleven days could best be deducted … Then came the difficult bit, introduced by a flatteringly lengthy explanation of the Easter tables for the prayer book, which were enclosed for Herring’s special perusal. The error in the Julian Easter was explained in astronomical terms, and Davall opined neutrally that “the full moons as computed by the Gregorian calendar, happen sufficiently near to the true ones, to found our ecclesiastical computations upon”. However, the Gregorian system of epacts had brought with it complicated rules which were best avoided …
… On the question of how the eleven days should be deducted, he [Herring] simply passed on the comments of “a better judge than myself”. The conclusion was that the days should be deducted in one block …
… Herring had nothing in particular to say about Easter, but he was nervous in the extreme about the general issue of altering church feasts …
Would you care to verify the text at Old Style and New Style dates#Adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which I think conflicts with what you have written at the Calendar Act article? NB that you can't give an opinion that the source given is wrong, only that it conflicts with another source and why the misunderstanding may have arisen. (I suspect the dreaded 'from', meaning 'after'). You are allowed to "draw readers' attention" but not tell them what you regard as the correct answer. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Poole, Robert (1998). "9, footnote 34". Time's alteration: Calendar reform in early modern England. London: UCL Press.
Parnham, Steve (2016). The Intriguing Truth about 5th April. CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1541126596.
O'Brien, Alan (2019). Why the Tax Year Begins on Sixth April. Lulu.com. eBook is free. p. 119. ISBN 978-0244705619.
Steel, Duncan (2000). Marking time: the epic quest to invent the perfect calendar (illustrated ed.). John Wiley and Sons. p. 5. ISBN 0-471-29827-1.
(Regarding the two emails, look at the history of your talk page. I wrote a message at 14:12 and corrected it at 14:13. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC))
I'll leave it to you how best to fix the error in the article, so a few points to note:
Or something like that anyway. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: I have been wondering whether it is worth trying to say something about the mention of "Europe" in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I don't have a definitive explanation for the reference but it seems such a curious inclusion that something might be worth saying. This is my current draft.
The reference to Europe is unusual and does not appear in other acts or the Calendar Act 1751, which dealt with some issues overlooked by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. [1] This may be because the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was not a government measure but a private enterprise led by Lord Chesterfield. The 1750 Act was drafted by Peter Davall, a barrister recruited by Chesterfield and not the usual draftsmen used by the government. Davall may have referred to Europe because he regarded the term as encompassing Great Britain though this seems doubtful because it would have been more straightforward to refer to Great Britain. It is unlikely that Davall contemplated applying the reform to Continental Europe most of which had long since both adopted the Gregorian calendar and opted to begin the year with 1 January.
Davall may have had in mind the Crown's claim to the French throne. William the Conqueror and subsequent English monarchs were lords of substantial parts of France. From the time of Edward III in 1340 they also claimed the throne of France. Gradually the French territories were lost with Calais being the last part of the mainland to go in 1558. The Channel Islands remained under the English Crown although they had been part of the ancient kingdom of France.
The Crown’s long standing inability to enforce claims in France did not change the legal fiction and British monarchs tenaciously clung to the title of King (or Queen) of France. This only ended in 1800 when the Act of Union joined Britain to Ireland and George III quietly abandoned his claim on France, which by then had become a republic. Until then each Parliament began with a recital which asserts that, for example, George II is Regis Magnae Britanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae. The claim then is repeated in English King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. An example is the Parliament beginning on 10 November 1747. [2]
The British acquired Gibraltar on the coast of Spain in 1704. Hence the reference to Europe in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 may, therefore, reflect the ancient but purely theoretical claim to the French crown and the possession of Gibraltar.
What do you think? Honandal2 ( talk) 15:42, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Europe: I've searched a bit and could not find Europe mentioned in a similar way in other Acts. Hence my wish to say something. Yes, I noted the conflict of interest point but it was enmeshed with much other advice so I was leaving it till tomorrow. But will give removal of the citation of my book priority. Honandal2 ( talk) 18:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: My book citation deleted. Honandal2 ( talk) 18:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I have jumped in and inserted this text:
Apart from Great Britain and Ireland, the only part of Europe under British sovereignty was Gibraltar. However, each session of Parliament began with a recital of the continued the legal fiction that the King was also the rightful King of France. [3]
.
Feel free to change if you think it can be improved. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 00:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
References
I have set up the Poole (1998) citation to use with template:sfn and converted a few uses of it. If you want to see how I did it for future reference, see the article history.
I noticed that there are two other Poole references, both seem to be to the same issue of the same journal, but the title is not the same: are they really the same but one of our editors was not so conscientious as the other? If so, let me know and I will combine them (it may be a bit messy because it involves archived copies) and convert them to sfn.
Reference 75 is now red because you removed the source pending administrator advice. It is not urgent to fix it but if you have another source that will suffice, please go ahead.
I will try to do the Letters to my son mañana. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:53, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks for sorting out the Poole book references.
ENGLAND. The ones I can see are references 55 and 70 and they look the same. Perhaps a correction has already been made? (NB: quoting reference numbers is dicey because they change if another references is inserted!)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks! I am impressed you found the IR quotation. I spent ages with no success. My doubt about your comment is that I think the item, like huge numbers of others, has simply been removed to avoid cluttering up the website with old stuff. I also think no one in HMRC knows or cares about the error. I see what you mean about transcribed versions. I like the original because there is no chance of transcription errors and I always like to see the actual original document. May be both can go in? I will look at the CoE issue later - too much other stuff to do, Honandal2 ( talk) 17:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Dr Robert Poole explains: [2] "The twelve- rather than eleven-day discrepancy between the start of the old year (25 March) and that of the modern financial year (6 April) has caused puzzlement, [...] In fact, 25 March was first day of the [calendar] year but the last day of the financial quarter, corresponding to 5 April; the difference was thus exactly eleven days". [a]
References
HM Revenue & Customs are a very helpful lot and explained the reason why the tax year starts on 6 April as follows: 'In order not to lose 11 days' tax revenue in that tax year, though, the authorities decided to tack the missing days on at the end, which meant moving the beginning of the tax year from the 25 March, Lady Day, (which since the Middle Ages had been regarded as the beginning of the legal year) to 6 April'.(Perhaps unsurprisingly, this page is no longer available on the HMRC website, given that 25 March marked the end of the legal year.)
I am assuming that the ping to me from your sandbox is just 'collateral damage', that it is a draft for the article talk page and you aren't expecting a response yet (so I won't).
By the way, in an active conversation, you don't need to ping participants because you may assume that they are watching the article and the indenting (done by a series of colons) will make it clear what the response relates to and to whom. Sometimes you might want to respond to two editors in the same post: the technique to use in that case is template:U. If you would like to see an example, I used it this morning at Talk:Backslash#History.
Regards. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Yes. Sorry. My ignorance. I assumed the sandbox was a private drafting space and did not realise that including a ping to you would actually reach you. Thanks for additional advice on technique. Honandal2 ( talk) 12:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Should you want to keep a record of how the article was at is maximum, see this permanent link. In principle, that url should work forever but if you prefer, in the menu bar down the left hand side you will find the option to save as a PDF or as a printable copy. Alternatively, you can create user:Honandal2/Sandbox2 and just copy that version of the article over to it.
I really appreciate all the work you put into the Calendar article, it is light years better than it was before you started. The big problem with Wikipedia is knowing when to stop, it is so easy to end up writing another book! (and who knows, maybe it will inspire you to do just that). It may be that you can rescue some of the material to use in other articles. In one way it's a pity that I didn't find the History of taxation in the United Kingdom article earlier, it might have saved you some work – but on the other hand I really believe that the version you wrote after you went back to the drawing board really did make journey worth while. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:54, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
In case it doesn't alert you, I've added some more comments on your draft. Good work! I see that Wiktionary has the definition of Pocket book we need, so let's use that instead of a template. [I will change your draft accordingly now].
(BTW, your ping from your sandbox didn't alert me either time, so there must be an exception to allow people to test or draft without 'jumping the gun'. I just happened to look, so if you need to alert me again, you will need to ping me from here or leave a message on my talk page.) -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
![]() |
Season's Greetings | |
Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Stonehenge at mid-winter sunrise is my Wiki-Solstice card to all for this year. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC) |
@ John Maynard Friedman: Best wishes to you too! Keep dodging Covid. Honandal2 ( talk) 15:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
In case you miss it, I wanted to let you know that the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 has achieved WP:Good Article standard after an exacting review. Your contributions were a major factor in making it the comprehensive reference that it is today. Thank you. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thank you and sorry for the delay in replying. Well done getting the article approved. I appreciate your kind comments about my contribution. You, of course, contributed greatly to the article and, with endless patience, to my Wikipedia education. I was a little disappointed to discover that Wikipedia doesn't aim to be as comprehensive as I had assumed and, instead, seeks to avoid boring the reader with overly detailed articles. Nevertheless it is a useful resource and gives the reader a good start on any subject. I had drafted an excessively long and quote-filled contribution on the Land Tax but I have since deleted it because I now realise this isn't what is wanted. On a quick read of the Calendar Act article I found one possible tiny slip under the heading Title of the Act where there may be an unintended curly bracket reference visible after "The old long titles had proved increasingly inconvenient {{efn|". Honandal2 ( talk) 11:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Following a message from DYKUpdateBot I looked again at the Calendar Act article and a point struck me about the passage under Easter Act 1928. This is written in the past tense. I don't think I originally used the past tense because the Act remains in force. At any time an Order in Council could be issued to fix the date of Easter for the UK. This might happen if the Christian churches agree but the Act might need revision if the date selected isn't the one in the 1928 Act. Most Churches are apparently content for Easter to be fixed apart from the Eastern Orthodox. There is a Wikipedia article Reform of the Date of Easter. I would rewrite the section like this:
The Wikipedia article at /info/en/?search=Reform_of_the_date_of_Easter has more. Honandal2 ( talk) 11:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I am reluctant to meddle with the drafting without consulting you because I regard you as the lead on the content and tone. Having got the article approved it would be a pity to mess it up. Personally I prefer "provides" rather than "provided" because the Act is still there giving the Council the option to fix the date. I would also not say the Act "never came into force" because that implies that it never could. I prefer the "If invoked" formula which I took from the previous draft. But I don't feel strongly. I don't propose to look at the tenses in the rest of the article! The opening paragraph of the article uses the present tense but there may be occasions when the past tense is appropriate. For example, the omission of 11 days has happened unlike the potential change of the date of Easter which can still happen. Honandal2 ( talk) 14:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Apropos of nothing but you may be amused to learn that I found another article here with the "extra day added in 1800 to make 6 April" myth, complete with citation! (I corrected, with a link to your Why the British tax year etc text.)
It occurs to me that I may have overstated the "no original research" rule. Finding and citing material in the National Archives is entirely legitimate: the issue arises only when it comes to drawing an inference or synthesis from them. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
On 25 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that until the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was passed, the new year began on 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland, and Britain's American colonies? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page ( here's how, Calendar (New Style) Act 1750), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 00:02, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
I've just come across an interesting article that might explain the strange (to modern eyes) use of 'from', that I thought might interest you? See Counting#Inclusive counting. I have added a note to History of taxation in the United Kingdom to draw attention to it. In your note about Coke, you write that the usage "may be much earlier". I know we can't speculate in main space but this method of counting would suggest an origin in Norman or at least Palace French. Compare French: quinzaine, a fortnight but literally fifteen. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 08:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi Alan,
I don't suppose you check in regularly so I thought that you might want to be alerted to some recent requests for supporting citations at the "Why does the tax year begin" section of
History of taxation in the United Kingdom. (You may see a discussion about style at the article talk page, it would probably be best if you don't participate unless you are very familiar with the Manual of Style.)
Regards JMF
--
John Maynard Friedman (
talk)
21:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: I hope you are keeping clear of Covid; I am so far! I came across an extensive website created by the financial journalist Paul Lewis - amongst other things he is the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Money Box. The site includes a pretty good explanation of the origin of the tax year which could be useful background. Towards the end of this he mentions my book. Do you think it would be helpful and/or appropriate to include a link to his explanation? The address of the Paul Lewis tax year account is:
https://paullewismoney.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-does-tax-year-really-begin-on-6.html
@ John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks. Your proposal is eminently reasonable, and thanks for implementing it too! Sorry I forgot to date my last note with the swung dashes. Honandal2 ( talk) 14:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
Hello Alan, I hope you are still contactable? Rereading History of taxation in the United Kingdom#Start of tax year, I stopped up short at this sentence:
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the tax year continued to run from 25 March until 1758 when Parliament added eleven days to the Window Tax year so that it began on 6 April. [1] The Land Tax year never changed.
Do you know if that is 25 March NS? or OS? Either way it is rather emphatic statement to make without a citation?
Best regards. -- 𝕁𝕄𝔽 ( talk) 00:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the Window Tax tax year continued to run "from" 25 March 1753 ( NS) until April 1758 when Parliament moved the due date to 5 April. [2] [b] The Land Tax year never changed.
Maynard Friedman|talk]])
References
XXXI And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid That from and after the fifth day of April one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight there shall be charged raised levied and paid unto his Majesty his heirs and successors the rates and duties upon houses windows or lights herein.
XXXI And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid That from and after the fifth day of April one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight there shall be charged raised levied and paid unto his Majesty his heirs and successors the rates and duties upon houses windows or lights herein.
( talk) Mea Culpa! Sorry to drag up the impact of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 on land tax again but I find I misled myself and, worse, you. I foolishly relied on memory and got it wrong. I have since returned to the statute. The debt protection rule in section VI of Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 does apply to land tax for the year from 25 March 1752, contrary to the view I previously expressed, but not to later land tax acts.
Section VI protects, amongst other things, debts:
"which shall become payable by virtue of any act or acts of parliament now in force, or which shall be made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752], or the time of doing any matter or thing directed or required by any such act or acts of parliament to be done in relation thereto"
The first part of this extract about acts in force does not apply because the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 certainly came into force after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. But what about the italicised extract? You have to establish when an act comes into force. You may remember from discussions on the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 that before 1793 an act was deemed to come into force on the first day of the Parliamentary Session in which it passed. See the Wikipedia article on the subject:
/info/en/?search=Acts_of_Parliament_(Commencement)_Act_1793
The Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is headed with the year 1752 and, like the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, it passed during the Parliament which began on 10 November 1747. That Parliament was prorogued on a number of occasions and the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 passed during the fourth Session and was deemed to come into force when that Session began on 17 January 1750.
The land tax for the year from 25 March 1752 was passed during the same Parliament but during the fifth Session which began on 14 November 1751. Thus that land tax was deemed to come into force on 14 November 1751 which was after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. However, the 1752 Land Tax Act was made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752] and so qualifies for protection under section VI.
This means the land tax payments due on the old quarter days of 29 September 1752, 25 December 1752 and 25 March 1753 were all deferred by the 11 omitted days.
You can see the land tax details on page 321of the statute at:
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge67britgoog/page/n348/mode/1up?view=theater
The Session details are at the top of the page and the brief summary of the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is below at CAP III.
The same statute volume contains the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 at page 186 and the Session information is on page 140.
This solves one problem but only kicks the can down the road to the next year. Land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753. The act passed in the same Parliament as the previous land tax act but this time during the sixth Session which began on 11 January 1753. See page 1 of the statute for the session and page 6 for the land tax act:
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge57britgoog/page/n49/mode/1up?view=theater
This means land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753 which is after 14 September 1752 and is not protected by section VI. Hence the quarterly payment days for that year due on 24 June 1753, 29 September 1753 etc remained unchanged and were, in principle, advanced by the 11 omitted days. The same applies to subsequent years’ land tax Acts.
The mystery is what happened in practice. Did anyone notice? Was the 1753 tax actually paid earlier? Today interest is charged on late tax payments and so are penalties in some cases, as Mr Zahawi found. But this didn’t happen in the eighteenth century. If the local land tax commissioners didn’t press people too hard for payment the issue may have been fudged. I haven’t found any evidence about what happened despite searches in the archives and in contemporary newspapers and the surviving Parliamentary reports. I doubt whether this obscure background is worth including in the article. Honandal2 ( talk) 11:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello, Honandal2, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.
Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:42, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
It would be helpful if you could provide a bit more information on the books you cited and better still, the specific page. The template cite book is a useful aid to ensuring that you get all the important items of data included. Let me know if you need any help. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can , contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse. |
Please help me with...
I have been working on part of an article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 under the heading Why the UK income tax year begins on 6 April:
Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April
Someone else has edited the citation for my first quotation from the Alexander Phillip book. I like the way this has put the author's name and book title below the quotation and I'd like to know how to do this. I am less happy about the way the reference now includes explanatory material about the definition of the financial year because it looks too dense. I would prefer to deal with that separately. I have spent some time trying to understand how the citation works without much success. Could you please tell how to get the citation of the author and names of the work to appear below while at the same time excluding the explanation about the financial buried in the citation?
Regards
Alan O'Brien
Honandal2 ( talk) 14:10, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. I attach below the first paragraph under the heading together with the quote which follows. My query concerns note 18 which also incorporates a note d. There is nothing I object to but, as I said, I'd like to know how to do a reference to an author and book in the way it appears below the quotation and I will look at your suggestions. I'd also prefer not to have the explanation of the financial year embedded in the reference. This is the passage and I have bolded the relevant bit which is right at the end:
Several theories have been proposed for the odd beginning of the British tax year on 6 April. The one most commonly found on British tax websites stems from a book published in 1921 by Alexander Philip.[18] In a brief passage Philips says that eleven days were added to the old tax year which began on 25 March. Then from 1753 until 1799 the tax year began on 5 April. He goes on to say that in 1800 a further day was added so that thereafter the tax year began on 6 April. The extra day was added, he says, because 1800 had 366 days in the Julian calendar but only 365 in the Gregorian calendar. He does not say why it was necessary to add another day. Further, he continues, the tax year was not changed when a thirteenth Julian leap day was skipped in 1900, so the tax year in the United Kingdom still begins on 6 April.[19] The passage is:
"A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date."[d] — Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement[18]
A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date.
— Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement [1]
Many thanks for this. Most helpful. Could you tell what the purpose of the colon at the start of a paragraph is for?
Thanks again. As you say, trying to grapple with the material you are writing is hard enough and there isn't a lot brain power left to absorb the technicalities of Wikipedia. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A ( talk) 14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
References
You may notice that edited your quotes in Calendar New Style Act, leaving only a cryptic edit note. It was a cockup, not a conspiracy: I've explained at the Act talk page. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I will study this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:9FA:509B:A596:E02A ( talk) 15:30, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
There are many many articles on Wikipedia that need the kind of researched improvement that you made to the Calendar Act. I too found citations hard work at the beginning and have collected miscellaneous tips at User:John Maynard Friedman#My useful links: feel free to raid. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Finally, note how I signed off each new point, although I have made a number of distinct points in this one session. That makes it easier for anyone replying to be clear which point they are addressing. I also created new sections, for much the same reason.-- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A (
talk)
14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I will try to remember to do this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A ( talk) 14:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
You may notice that I tarted up the George III citations. It took me years to figure out how to do that, so I suggest you continue to cite in the simple way that you've been doing and leave it to me to snazz them up. Actually the only aspect really worth having is the ability to give the URL of a specific page in a book. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:36, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Read all about it here: Help:Your first article. Also, WP:SPLIT. Good luck! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:32, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Hi! Sorry about forgetting (again!) to use the four tildes. Thanks for the ping information. Another thing I didn't know! I wasn't sure whether the ping stuff should come right at the start of the line or after the tildes. I drafted the revised section on the income tax year in a sandbox but then copied into the same place in the article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 which implemented the move to the Gregorian calendar. I would be very grateful for any comments you have but I hesitate to trouble you again. I revised the section because a couple of other people criticised it. They said it lacked the Wiki style and was unclear. Honandal2 ( talk) 15:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
... so the national accounts continued to be made up to end on the Old Style quarter-days of 5 January, 5 April, 5 July and 10 October. [2] page needed
References
Hi, I don't know if this is a help or a hindrance so you might want to experiment in your sandbox first.
But I suspect it may be safer than citing a google page? -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
FYI, I have raised a challenge at Template should not have default values (it was this regression to a default that sent you to the Scottish Act). You don't need to do anything but the way I used nowiki to explain my point may be of interest if you have nothing more pressing on your time. Also, I spotted the reason for 1896 being displayed so often: poor design. I don't speak template-ish, otherwise I would change the output so that it displayed as
but best to focus on one thing at a time and the current practice of substituting something arbitrary for missing data is by far the more serious issue. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:04, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
References
When you have nothing better to do, you can find a coherent version jof what I was trying and failing to explain, at Help:Wikitext, which covers nowiki among other interesting nitty-gritty items. I recommend the help:cheatsheet article linked from there too.
Just to satisfy your curiousity, it is not something you need to give any priority to. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Did you raise a query about giving authority for the time at which a Bill became law before 1793? I have tried to deal with this but it has led to a lengthy explanation. I had hoped that a link to the 1793 Act would do because that explains the old procedure. I don't mind giving a fuller explanation but I am conscious that some may not like it! Honandal2 ( talk) 15:49, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
In general, I don't like wp:Harvard referencing, especially when it is embedded in the text (Friedman, 2020) like that. It has to be done in paper documents but not when hypertext is available. There is a rolling debate on the subject in Wikipedia, I won't go into the detail unless you really want it. But it is very useful, though, when you want to cite the same book multiple times – putting almost exactly the same thing in ref tags is tiresome to write and tiresome for later editors because of the risk of mistaking one instance of the citation for another. So you will see that I changed the multiple citations of Cheney to use template:sfn. I'm not suggesting you do any, just letting you know what I'm up to [but if you do want to do it, let me know and I'll try to give you one of my impenetrable explanations 😎 ].
By the way, did you know about "View history" at the top of the editing window? V useful to see what has changed (and by whom) since the last time you were here. Also, if you have multiple changes to the same section, use "Show preview" rather than "Publish changes" to check each change as you do it, then "Publish changes" when all done.
Article is shaping up nicely now: think we may be well on the way to achieving WP:Good article status! -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:52, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Yes the technique you used on Cheney is really neat! I have missed the talk page for the article and I don't know how to access it. Can you point me in the right direction? Honandal2 ( talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
talk:article name
, for example
Talk:Easter Act 1928. You can go directly to the talk page by typing that in the search box at the far right of the second row of the Wikipedia 'banner' (window heading).Article
and Talk
. That "talk" is a link to the article talk page: click on it just go there or right click to open it in a new tab if you don't want to lose your place in the original article.Read / Edit / View history / ☆
. Then whenever you check your watchlist (top row of banner, RHS), you will see any changes in your watched articles or their talk-pages since you last looked.I'd also welcome advice on links to Wikipedia articles. I have just been expanding the section on amendments to the Calendar Act and inserted links to the relevant Wikepedia articles. All the links are "bad". I did the insertion in the same way as for external web pages, which I gather is not the right way. Honandal2 ( talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
References
Annoyingly, after all time spent searching Google Books looking for records of Acts of Parliament, I've just found this source
I thought perhaps you might find it useful when researching your next big contribution! It would be a shame to let it go to waste.
-- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 23:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
As I believe it was you who wrote that section, I won't bother putting this on the talk page. Before I hid it behind a comment envelope, the section Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Eleven days added to prevent loss of tax? said that two editions of the 1798 Act exist, but the URLs provided are identical. Shurely shome mishtake? (Private Eye, passim). -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Do you have a copy of Poole? It is being suggested at the article talk page as a source to clear up the misapprehension that the change was "smuggled past" the CoE. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 08:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
The principal parliamentary debate of Chesterfield's bill took place in the House of Lords on 18 March 1751, with seventy-three bishops and peers present to hear Macclesfield and Chesterfield explain the measure. Two of the three main components of the Act required little explanation. The commencement of the official year on 1 January instead of 25 March was a convenience in line with common practice, with no real ideological implications. The new Easter, more surprisingly, did not feature in public debate, perhaps because few people understood how Easter worked anyway. Care was taken, however, to defuse the issue. The papal origins of the calendar were glossed over, and whilst the involvement of British experts was trumpeted, that of the Roman Catholic mathematician Father Charles Walmesley was hushed up. Further to conceal the Roman connection, a peculiarly British system for determining the date of Easter was drawn up to be inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, different from the Gregorian in execution but identical in effect: "the papal calendar with the papal moon omitted", as a later writer put it. [de Morgan.] All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers.
https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/149/1/95/1460442?redirectedFrom=fulltext
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I had not been following the other discussion. The expression "smuggled past" is ambiguous. A smuggler hopes to beat the Customs by entirely concealing his activities. This is not what happened here: Chesterfield & Co knew Bishops sat in the House of Lords and would be aware of the Bill. I took "smuggled past" to mean something different, namely, that the real Catholic nature of the Easter reform was obscured by clever spin which persuaded Archbishop Herring that this was a technical change based on purely British scientific research. This is what I take Poole to be saying in his book and in the article I quoted : "All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers". I attach below an extract from Chapter 8 of the book, page 115 onwards, which gives some more detail:
… Davall (Counsel who drafted the Bill) approached him (Archbishop Herring) tactfully. He began by soliciting the Archbishop’s opinion on the uncontroversial question of how the eleven days could best be deducted … Then came the difficult bit, introduced by a flatteringly lengthy explanation of the Easter tables for the prayer book, which were enclosed for Herring’s special perusal. The error in the Julian Easter was explained in astronomical terms, and Davall opined neutrally that “the full moons as computed by the Gregorian calendar, happen sufficiently near to the true ones, to found our ecclesiastical computations upon”. However, the Gregorian system of epacts had brought with it complicated rules which were best avoided …
… On the question of how the eleven days should be deducted, he [Herring] simply passed on the comments of “a better judge than myself”. The conclusion was that the days should be deducted in one block …
… Herring had nothing in particular to say about Easter, but he was nervous in the extreme about the general issue of altering church feasts …
Would you care to verify the text at Old Style and New Style dates#Adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which I think conflicts with what you have written at the Calendar Act article? NB that you can't give an opinion that the source given is wrong, only that it conflicts with another source and why the misunderstanding may have arisen. (I suspect the dreaded 'from', meaning 'after'). You are allowed to "draw readers' attention" but not tell them what you regard as the correct answer. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Poole, Robert (1998). "9, footnote 34". Time's alteration: Calendar reform in early modern England. London: UCL Press.
Parnham, Steve (2016). The Intriguing Truth about 5th April. CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1541126596.
O'Brien, Alan (2019). Why the Tax Year Begins on Sixth April. Lulu.com. eBook is free. p. 119. ISBN 978-0244705619.
Steel, Duncan (2000). Marking time: the epic quest to invent the perfect calendar (illustrated ed.). John Wiley and Sons. p. 5. ISBN 0-471-29827-1.
(Regarding the two emails, look at the history of your talk page. I wrote a message at 14:12 and corrected it at 14:13. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 17:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC))
I'll leave it to you how best to fix the error in the article, so a few points to note:
Or something like that anyway. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: I have been wondering whether it is worth trying to say something about the mention of "Europe" in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I don't have a definitive explanation for the reference but it seems such a curious inclusion that something might be worth saying. This is my current draft.
The reference to Europe is unusual and does not appear in other acts or the Calendar Act 1751, which dealt with some issues overlooked by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. [1] This may be because the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was not a government measure but a private enterprise led by Lord Chesterfield. The 1750 Act was drafted by Peter Davall, a barrister recruited by Chesterfield and not the usual draftsmen used by the government. Davall may have referred to Europe because he regarded the term as encompassing Great Britain though this seems doubtful because it would have been more straightforward to refer to Great Britain. It is unlikely that Davall contemplated applying the reform to Continental Europe most of which had long since both adopted the Gregorian calendar and opted to begin the year with 1 January.
Davall may have had in mind the Crown's claim to the French throne. William the Conqueror and subsequent English monarchs were lords of substantial parts of France. From the time of Edward III in 1340 they also claimed the throne of France. Gradually the French territories were lost with Calais being the last part of the mainland to go in 1558. The Channel Islands remained under the English Crown although they had been part of the ancient kingdom of France.
The Crown’s long standing inability to enforce claims in France did not change the legal fiction and British monarchs tenaciously clung to the title of King (or Queen) of France. This only ended in 1800 when the Act of Union joined Britain to Ireland and George III quietly abandoned his claim on France, which by then had become a republic. Until then each Parliament began with a recital which asserts that, for example, George II is Regis Magnae Britanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae. The claim then is repeated in English King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. An example is the Parliament beginning on 10 November 1747. [2]
The British acquired Gibraltar on the coast of Spain in 1704. Hence the reference to Europe in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 may, therefore, reflect the ancient but purely theoretical claim to the French crown and the possession of Gibraltar.
What do you think? Honandal2 ( talk) 15:42, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Europe: I've searched a bit and could not find Europe mentioned in a similar way in other Acts. Hence my wish to say something. Yes, I noted the conflict of interest point but it was enmeshed with much other advice so I was leaving it till tomorrow. But will give removal of the citation of my book priority. Honandal2 ( talk) 18:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: My book citation deleted. Honandal2 ( talk) 18:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
I have jumped in and inserted this text:
Apart from Great Britain and Ireland, the only part of Europe under British sovereignty was Gibraltar. However, each session of Parliament began with a recital of the continued the legal fiction that the King was also the rightful King of France. [3]
.
Feel free to change if you think it can be improved. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 00:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
References
I have set up the Poole (1998) citation to use with template:sfn and converted a few uses of it. If you want to see how I did it for future reference, see the article history.
I noticed that there are two other Poole references, both seem to be to the same issue of the same journal, but the title is not the same: are they really the same but one of our editors was not so conscientious as the other? If so, let me know and I will combine them (it may be a bit messy because it involves archived copies) and convert them to sfn.
Reference 75 is now red because you removed the source pending administrator advice. It is not urgent to fix it but if you have another source that will suffice, please go ahead.
I will try to do the Letters to my son mañana. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:53, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks for sorting out the Poole book references.
ENGLAND. The ones I can see are references 55 and 70 and they look the same. Perhaps a correction has already been made? (NB: quoting reference numbers is dicey because they change if another references is inserted!)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks! I am impressed you found the IR quotation. I spent ages with no success. My doubt about your comment is that I think the item, like huge numbers of others, has simply been removed to avoid cluttering up the website with old stuff. I also think no one in HMRC knows or cares about the error. I see what you mean about transcribed versions. I like the original because there is no chance of transcription errors and I always like to see the actual original document. May be both can go in? I will look at the CoE issue later - too much other stuff to do, Honandal2 ( talk) 17:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Dr Robert Poole explains: [2] "The twelve- rather than eleven-day discrepancy between the start of the old year (25 March) and that of the modern financial year (6 April) has caused puzzlement, [...] In fact, 25 March was first day of the [calendar] year but the last day of the financial quarter, corresponding to 5 April; the difference was thus exactly eleven days". [a]
References
HM Revenue & Customs are a very helpful lot and explained the reason why the tax year starts on 6 April as follows: 'In order not to lose 11 days' tax revenue in that tax year, though, the authorities decided to tack the missing days on at the end, which meant moving the beginning of the tax year from the 25 March, Lady Day, (which since the Middle Ages had been regarded as the beginning of the legal year) to 6 April'.(Perhaps unsurprisingly, this page is no longer available on the HMRC website, given that 25 March marked the end of the legal year.)
I am assuming that the ping to me from your sandbox is just 'collateral damage', that it is a draft for the article talk page and you aren't expecting a response yet (so I won't).
By the way, in an active conversation, you don't need to ping participants because you may assume that they are watching the article and the indenting (done by a series of colons) will make it clear what the response relates to and to whom. Sometimes you might want to respond to two editors in the same post: the technique to use in that case is template:U. If you would like to see an example, I used it this morning at Talk:Backslash#History.
Regards. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Yes. Sorry. My ignorance. I assumed the sandbox was a private drafting space and did not realise that including a ping to you would actually reach you. Thanks for additional advice on technique. Honandal2 ( talk) 12:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Should you want to keep a record of how the article was at is maximum, see this permanent link. In principle, that url should work forever but if you prefer, in the menu bar down the left hand side you will find the option to save as a PDF or as a printable copy. Alternatively, you can create user:Honandal2/Sandbox2 and just copy that version of the article over to it.
I really appreciate all the work you put into the Calendar article, it is light years better than it was before you started. The big problem with Wikipedia is knowing when to stop, it is so easy to end up writing another book! (and who knows, maybe it will inspire you to do just that). It may be that you can rescue some of the material to use in other articles. In one way it's a pity that I didn't find the History of taxation in the United Kingdom article earlier, it might have saved you some work – but on the other hand I really believe that the version you wrote after you went back to the drawing board really did make journey worth while. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 19:54, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
In case it doesn't alert you, I've added some more comments on your draft. Good work! I see that Wiktionary has the definition of Pocket book we need, so let's use that instead of a template. [I will change your draft accordingly now].
(BTW, your ping from your sandbox didn't alert me either time, so there must be an exception to allow people to test or draft without 'jumping the gun'. I just happened to look, so if you need to alert me again, you will need to ping me from here or leave a message on my talk page.) -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 12:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
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Season's Greetings | |
Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Stonehenge at mid-winter sunrise is my Wiki-Solstice card to all for this year. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC) |
@ John Maynard Friedman: Best wishes to you too! Keep dodging Covid. Honandal2 ( talk) 15:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
In case you miss it, I wanted to let you know that the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 has achieved WP:Good Article standard after an exacting review. Your contributions were a major factor in making it the comprehensive reference that it is today. Thank you. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thank you and sorry for the delay in replying. Well done getting the article approved. I appreciate your kind comments about my contribution. You, of course, contributed greatly to the article and, with endless patience, to my Wikipedia education. I was a little disappointed to discover that Wikipedia doesn't aim to be as comprehensive as I had assumed and, instead, seeks to avoid boring the reader with overly detailed articles. Nevertheless it is a useful resource and gives the reader a good start on any subject. I had drafted an excessively long and quote-filled contribution on the Land Tax but I have since deleted it because I now realise this isn't what is wanted. On a quick read of the Calendar Act article I found one possible tiny slip under the heading Title of the Act where there may be an unintended curly bracket reference visible after "The old long titles had proved increasingly inconvenient {{efn|". Honandal2 ( talk) 11:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Following a message from DYKUpdateBot I looked again at the Calendar Act article and a point struck me about the passage under Easter Act 1928. This is written in the past tense. I don't think I originally used the past tense because the Act remains in force. At any time an Order in Council could be issued to fix the date of Easter for the UK. This might happen if the Christian churches agree but the Act might need revision if the date selected isn't the one in the 1928 Act. Most Churches are apparently content for Easter to be fixed apart from the Eastern Orthodox. There is a Wikipedia article Reform of the Date of Easter. I would rewrite the section like this:
The Wikipedia article at /info/en/?search=Reform_of_the_date_of_Easter has more. Honandal2 ( talk) 11:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I am reluctant to meddle with the drafting without consulting you because I regard you as the lead on the content and tone. Having got the article approved it would be a pity to mess it up. Personally I prefer "provides" rather than "provided" because the Act is still there giving the Council the option to fix the date. I would also not say the Act "never came into force" because that implies that it never could. I prefer the "If invoked" formula which I took from the previous draft. But I don't feel strongly. I don't propose to look at the tenses in the rest of the article! The opening paragraph of the article uses the present tense but there may be occasions when the past tense is appropriate. For example, the omission of 11 days has happened unlike the potential change of the date of Easter which can still happen. Honandal2 ( talk) 14:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
Apropos of nothing but you may be amused to learn that I found another article here with the "extra day added in 1800 to make 6 April" myth, complete with citation! (I corrected, with a link to your Why the British tax year etc text.)
It occurs to me that I may have overstated the "no original research" rule. Finding and citing material in the National Archives is entirely legitimate: the issue arises only when it comes to drawing an inference or synthesis from them. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 14:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
On 25 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that until the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was passed, the new year began on 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland, and Britain's American colonies? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page ( here's how, Calendar (New Style) Act 1750), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 00:02, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
I've just come across an interesting article that might explain the strange (to modern eyes) use of 'from', that I thought might interest you? See Counting#Inclusive counting. I have added a note to History of taxation in the United Kingdom to draw attention to it. In your note about Coke, you write that the usage "may be much earlier". I know we can't speculate in main space but this method of counting would suggest an origin in Norman or at least Palace French. Compare French: quinzaine, a fortnight but literally fifteen. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 08:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi Alan,
I don't suppose you check in regularly so I thought that you might want to be alerted to some recent requests for supporting citations at the "Why does the tax year begin" section of
History of taxation in the United Kingdom. (You may see a discussion about style at the article talk page, it would probably be best if you don't participate unless you are very familiar with the Manual of Style.)
Regards JMF
--
John Maynard Friedman (
talk)
21:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
@ John Maynard Friedman: I hope you are keeping clear of Covid; I am so far! I came across an extensive website created by the financial journalist Paul Lewis - amongst other things he is the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Money Box. The site includes a pretty good explanation of the origin of the tax year which could be useful background. Towards the end of this he mentions my book. Do you think it would be helpful and/or appropriate to include a link to his explanation? The address of the Paul Lewis tax year account is:
https://paullewismoney.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-does-tax-year-really-begin-on-6.html
@ John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks. Your proposal is eminently reasonable, and thanks for implementing it too! Sorry I forgot to date my last note with the swung dashes. Honandal2 ( talk) 14:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
Hello Alan, I hope you are still contactable? Rereading History of taxation in the United Kingdom#Start of tax year, I stopped up short at this sentence:
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the tax year continued to run from 25 March until 1758 when Parliament added eleven days to the Window Tax year so that it began on 6 April. [1] The Land Tax year never changed.
Do you know if that is 25 March NS? or OS? Either way it is rather emphatic statement to make without a citation?
Best regards. -- 𝕁𝕄𝔽 ( talk) 00:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the Window Tax tax year continued to run "from" 25 March 1753 ( NS) until April 1758 when Parliament moved the due date to 5 April. [2] [b] The Land Tax year never changed.
Maynard Friedman|talk]])
References
XXXI And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid That from and after the fifth day of April one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight there shall be charged raised levied and paid unto his Majesty his heirs and successors the rates and duties upon houses windows or lights herein.
XXXI And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid That from and after the fifth day of April one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight there shall be charged raised levied and paid unto his Majesty his heirs and successors the rates and duties upon houses windows or lights herein.
( talk) Mea Culpa! Sorry to drag up the impact of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 on land tax again but I find I misled myself and, worse, you. I foolishly relied on memory and got it wrong. I have since returned to the statute. The debt protection rule in section VI of Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 does apply to land tax for the year from 25 March 1752, contrary to the view I previously expressed, but not to later land tax acts.
Section VI protects, amongst other things, debts:
"which shall become payable by virtue of any act or acts of parliament now in force, or which shall be made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752], or the time of doing any matter or thing directed or required by any such act or acts of parliament to be done in relation thereto"
The first part of this extract about acts in force does not apply because the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 certainly came into force after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. But what about the italicised extract? You have to establish when an act comes into force. You may remember from discussions on the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 that before 1793 an act was deemed to come into force on the first day of the Parliamentary Session in which it passed. See the Wikipedia article on the subject:
/info/en/?search=Acts_of_Parliament_(Commencement)_Act_1793
The Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is headed with the year 1752 and, like the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, it passed during the Parliament which began on 10 November 1747. That Parliament was prorogued on a number of occasions and the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 passed during the fourth Session and was deemed to come into force when that Session began on 17 January 1750.
The land tax for the year from 25 March 1752 was passed during the same Parliament but during the fifth Session which began on 14 November 1751. Thus that land tax was deemed to come into force on 14 November 1751 which was after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. However, the 1752 Land Tax Act was made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752] and so qualifies for protection under section VI.
This means the land tax payments due on the old quarter days of 29 September 1752, 25 December 1752 and 25 March 1753 were all deferred by the 11 omitted days.
You can see the land tax details on page 321of the statute at:
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge67britgoog/page/n348/mode/1up?view=theater
The Session details are at the top of the page and the brief summary of the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is below at CAP III.
The same statute volume contains the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 at page 186 and the Session information is on page 140.
This solves one problem but only kicks the can down the road to the next year. Land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753. The act passed in the same Parliament as the previous land tax act but this time during the sixth Session which began on 11 January 1753. See page 1 of the statute for the session and page 6 for the land tax act:
https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge57britgoog/page/n49/mode/1up?view=theater
This means land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753 which is after 14 September 1752 and is not protected by section VI. Hence the quarterly payment days for that year due on 24 June 1753, 29 September 1753 etc remained unchanged and were, in principle, advanced by the 11 omitted days. The same applies to subsequent years’ land tax Acts.
The mystery is what happened in practice. Did anyone notice? Was the 1753 tax actually paid earlier? Today interest is charged on late tax payments and so are penalties in some cases, as Mr Zahawi found. But this didn’t happen in the eighteenth century. If the local land tax commissioners didn’t press people too hard for payment the issue may have been fudged. I haven’t found any evidence about what happened despite searches in the archives and in contemporary newspapers and the surviving Parliamentary reports. I doubt whether this obscure background is worth including in the article. Honandal2 ( talk) 11:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)