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Taxation page for Connecticat

Online Resources

 * 1862-1874 — FamilySearch.org. Images only.
 * 1862-1918 U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 for Connecticut at Ancestry.com (Free /$)
 *  1915-1926 Inheritance Tax Division FamilySearch catalog

Why Use Tax Records
Tax record content varies and may include the name and residence of the taxpayer, description of the real estate, name of original purchaser, description of personal property, number of males over 21, number of school children, slaves, and farm animals. Tax records usually are arranged by date and locality and are not normally indexed. Tax records can be used in place of missing land and census records to locate a person’s residence.

County Level
Town Records

Town records generally begin with the founding of the town and are kept to the present. Many of the original town records are in the town clerks' offices. Some are at the Connecticut State Library. This includes Town tax records

An excellent inventory of Connecticut local records is Nelson P. Mead, "Public Archives of Connecticut: County, Probate, and Local Records," in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1906, Volume 2, Ameruican Hisorical Association Annual report pp. 53-127 Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908

Taxes were levied for personal property and land through out most of Connecticut's history. The town assessor made lists of all taxables'. This generated a considerable number of tax lists over time. Tax records are included with in each town. You can write or call to the town for infomation about tax lists.

An allphabetical list of towns and phone numbers can be found here Town Vital Records Directory.

The Family History Library has microfilms of many Connecticut town records from the creation of the town to the early 1920s. To find the film numbers for these records, use the FamilySearch Catalog Place-names search for a particular town.

State Level

 * The Connecticut State Library has a list of various tax records still at the town clerk's offices.
 * The Connecticut Historical Society through out the state have some genealogical collections and records.

Highly valuable tax record for Connecticut is the U.S. Direct Tax for 1798. The records are extant for nearly half of the towns with some also having rate lists for 1813,1814,1815,1816. The original booklets indicate rates based on land, dwellings, and personal property of which is usually itemized. Years later out-of-state owners were listed. Records haven't been filmed as yet but can be seen at the Connecticut Historical Society.


 * 1670. Holbrook, Jay Mack. Connecticut 1670 Census. Oxford, Mass.: Holbrook Research Institute, 1977. A reconstructed census of over 2,300 heads of families recorded in tax lists and other records. . Other libraries (WorldCat).


 * 1862-1866. United States. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Internal revenue assessment lists for Connecticut, 1862-1866. Arranged by district, then by date. District 1 contains Hartford and Tolland counties; district 2, Middlesex and New Haven counties; district 3, New London and Windham counties; and district 4, Fairfield and Litchfield counties..


 * 1915-1926.Connecticut. Inheritance Tax Division. Estate record card index, 1915-1926. Records are arranged alphabetically by name of deceased. Contains name of deceased, residence, date of death, probate district, value of estate, tax information, etc..

Tax Laws
In July of 1862, Congress passed the Internal Revenue Act to provide income for the Government to pay the public debt including Civil War costs. After the Civil War, taxes were abolished until only a tax on liquor and tobacco remained in 1883. An 1895 Supreme Court ruling declared that income tax was unconstitutional and led to the ratification of the sixteenth amendment in 1913 which states that Congress has the power to establish and collect taxes on incomes. This was the beginning of our modern day taxes.

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What history has shown us is that while property taxes are locally levied, there is significant state involvement with the amount of tax local political subdivisions can levy, how property assessments are conducted, and what services local taxing subdivisions must provide for their residents. Many of the changes the state has made in the past to lower the local property tax required a shift in financial responsibility from the local governments to the state. This comes at a cost to state taxpayers, because the state has obligations it must fund as well, with a limited amount of state tax dollars.


 * Jones, Frederick Robertson. History of Taxation in Connecticut, 1636-1776. Reprint. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1973. Originally published: Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1896. (Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science. 14th series; 8).