Quoting John Hasler (jhas...@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.

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