Latest news with #LadyDay
Mint
29-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Why does the British tax year end on April 5th?
For Britons the end of the tax year looms on April 5th. Why such a seemingly random date? In the Middle Ages England's tax year—or a nascent version of it—ended on Lady Day, March 25th, a religious festival by when debts had to be settled. The country, like most of Europe, used the Julian calendar. But Julius Caesar's system was flawed, and in 1582 continental Europe, on Pope Gregory XIII's orders, shifted to a more accurate model. Protestant England resisted. By the mid-18th century England was 11 days behind the continent, creating scope for confusion in trade and diplomacy. To catch up it made a one-off excision of a week and a half from September 1752. People would go to sleep on September 2nd and wake up on the 14th. At the time, tax was charged not on income but on land and windows. These were annual payments, so to keep the tax period at 365 days people were given 11 extra days to settle their bill. Then, in 1758, the window-tax year was explicitly extended by 11 days, to April 5th. This was the date used when William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax in 1799, and has marked the close of the tax year ever since. Some may see this as an example of Britain's loveable eccentricity, others as a symbol of the arcane nature of the British tax code itself. The April date puts Britain at odds with countries such as America, France and Germany, all of which harmonise with the calendar year. Indeed, it does not coincide with the British government's own financial year, which begins (don't ask why) on April 1st. The Chartered Institute of Taxation, a body for tax professionals, says getting in sync with other countries would increase efficiency and reduce friction. Despite its name, the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS), an independent body within the Treasury, pointed in a 2021 report to the administrative effort that would be involved in changing the date, though it conceded that 'a tax year aligned to the calendar year would be the natural, simplest and easiest approach". Don't hold your breath: the OTS was abolished in 2023. Correction (March 31st 2025): The original version of this article mistakenly attributed the Gregorian calendar to Pope Gregory III, not XIII. Sorry. For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
Telegraph
22-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Sacred Mysteries: Two breathtaking Lady chapels and one hammer
It is Lady Day on March 25, next Tuesday, one of the year's four quarter days, when rents become due. As a church feast it marks the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel of the conception of Jesus by the Virgin Mary. The name Lady Day refers to Mary, widely called Our Lady in pre-Reformation times. It was often called Our Lady Day, just as the phrase was attached to a great list of flowers: Our Lady's bedstraw (Galium verum or lady's bedstraw), which once gave the colour to double Gloucester cheese; Our Lady's gloves (Digitalis, foxglove); Our Lady's cushion (Armeria maritima, thrift, the flower that used to appear on the 12-sided threepenny bit); Our Lady's slipper (the slipper orchid) and so on. Despite being called Lady Day, the Annunciation is a feast of the Lord, since it celebrates his incarnation. That is of course why it falls nine months before Christmas (and always in the penitential season of Lent). As with Christmas, it is impossible to leave Mary out of the story. Contrariwise, Mary was the object of devotion only because she acted in such close coordination with her son. The High Middle Ages saw in England an efflorescence of Gothic architecture in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, coinciding with an expression of devotion to the Virgin Mary. The Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral is one consequence. The chapel is 100ft long and 46ft wide, attached to the cathedral transept only by one corner, so that it is full of light. Undeniably the transparent glass in the big traceried windows makes it seem to float. But it would have been undeniably beautiful in a different way when it was full of coloured glass (like the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris). The Lady Chapel at Ely was being built in the years that followed the collapse of the central tower of the cathedral in 1322 and its replacement with the astonishingly well contrived octagon lantern. Two hundred years later Bishop Thomas Goodrich, acting out of principle, ordered the removal of all images in the churches of his diocese and the return of certificates of their destruction from the clergy. In the cathedral this meant the glass was smashed and at least the head broken off the hundreds of statues in their ornate stone niches. A different fate befell the statuary at the nation's most prominent Lady chapel, Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey. It was built in the breathtaking stone greenhouse Perpendicular style at the king's behest as a future shrine for his kinsman Henry VI and at the same time a chapel of the Virgin Mary. But Henry VI was never canonised and the chapel became the burial place of Henry VII and monarchs to come. Perhaps the proximity of royalty protected the statues of saints in Henry VII's Chapel. Today there are 96 of an original 107. They were the King's choice and represent a programme of ordinary devotion in the early Tudor period. I am glad to say that St Christopher is there with his tree-sized staff for fording the river. I won't go through them all, but there are saints you'd expect in churches of the time: Barbara with her tower, George with the dragon, Roche with his doggy and Anthony with his piggy; the Evangelist Matthew is wearing specs and the rarer Wilgefortis, a bearded woman, holds the cross of her martyrdom. These saints, gathered round Christ and his mother (Mary also depicted being taught to read by her mother Anne) represented to Henry VII the Church in heaven. Surrounded by their stone images he was buried.
