Public Finance

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Start Date: 01/01/1850
End Date: 01/01/1914

The series made available here were originally put online in the mid-2000s by the Historical National Accounts Group for Ireland (HNAG).  

 

Income Tax 1850-1914 

Income tax was levied under five schedules, (A) income from United Kingdom land, (B) commercial occupation of land, (C) income from public securities, (D) trading income, income from professions and vocations, interest, overseas income and casual income, (E) employment income. 

xlsx (zip file), csv (zip file)

Reports on property and income tax, 1854–1914 

Full reports on property and income tax 1854–1914 from the British Parliamentary Papers. 

xlsx (zip file), csv (zip file), pdf (zip file)

Summary of revenue and expenditure (exchequer issues), 1901 

xlsx, csv, pdf

 

About HNAG  

HNAG was founded by Kieran Kennedy in 1994 and has been a nexus for scholars and professionals interested in Irish economic history. Meeting initially at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin, the group later migrated to Trinity College Dublin, where it evolved into the Irish Quantitative History group (IQH) that stills meets annually in January each year in Trinity. 

Comprising academics, researchers and public sector representatives, HNAG’s original mission was to develop comprehensive statistics on Irish economic growth from the Famine to the First World War; those interested in that initial mission are encouraged to read Andersson & Lennard (2019). Since the inception of HNAG, the group produced outputs including symposiums, working papers, and data series on Irish economic history. With Kieran Kennedy at the helm, the group’s efforts significantly contributed to the exploration and understanding of Ireland’s economic past. One of their outputs was a digital data depository, created by Jason Begley, Frank Geary, and Kevin O’Rourke. 

Regrettably, the data made available online by HNAG, and which were stored on TCD servers, were lost in the mid-2010s. With the support of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), through a 2023 Nowlan Digitisation Grant, for which we are very grateful, it has been possible to restore the HNAG data series. In addition to the financial support of the RIA, we also benefited hugely from the cooperation of those involved in HNAG and the IQH. These valuable datasets are now hosted on the CEPH website, ensuring broad accessibility and visibility for researchers and the general public.