The value of tax reliefs depend on individual circumstances and the levels and bases of taxation and reliefs from taxation can change at any time.

Yet these agents have no special privileges in England, no relief from taxation and no special shops such as we have, from which they can buy cheap goods.

It was based on the tithe of the harvest, the normal method in the Near East, and this meant that their subjects, unlike the Egyptian peasants, did have some relief from taxation in a bad year.

Titmuss, who originated the notion of 'social divisions of welfare' identified alongside mainstream 'public welfare"fiscal welfare', the system of relief from taxation (of which the relief for mortgage interest payments and pension contributions are among the most important examples) and 'occupational welfare'(the range of fringe benefits available to some employees).

A commonly cited piece of evidence for urban decline is the number of petitions to the Crown for relief from taxation, and equally common is the view of historians that these must be regarded with caution, as the towns were liable to paint their poverty in lurid terms, and to emulate each other in their appeals.