Taxation, Tax-Farmers (ancien régime). The monarchy never found it easy to levy taxes during the ancien régime, since feudal dues tended to be paid to the local seigneur before royal taxes, and the king was supposed to live off his own estates except in emergencies. There was no budget, and revenue was raised according to immediate need, with financiers and tax-farmers making advances to bridge the gap between collection and receipt.
The principal direct royal tax was the taille, levied either on individuals (taille personnelle) or on commoner lands (taille réelle) depending on the region, and reserved for the king by the ordinance of 1439; it was his chief source of strength. A host of indirect taxes existed, the most important of which was the gabelle, the monopoly on the sale of salt in many provinces, established in the 1330s; the gabelous (enforcement officers) were much hated, and smuggling was rife. Aides were taxes on the consumption of articles, often those considered luxuries but also including drinks, livestock, wood, and eventually almost anything. These went by various names, such as subvention (1656), gros, quatrième, cinq sols, and annuel (on the existence of distinct commercial premises). Their incidence and existence varied enormously according to provinces or town. Octrois were entry taxes levied on goods at customs barriers on entry to towns. Traites were taxes levied on goods on entry or exit from provinces or the kingdom.
Indirect taxes were usually collected by taxfarmers, who advanced the receipts to the royal treasury in return for the right to keep as profits the often substantial difference between the sums levied (minus costs) and the sum advanced. The Fermiers Généraux were a syndicate of 40 tax-farmers who had purchased the Royal General Farm, the combination from 1681 of the ‘Cinq Grosses Fermes’ of traites for 13 provinces and the aides, gabelles, and receipts from the royal domains. Nobles, clergy, and privileged urban bourgeois were usually exempt from many forms of taxation, but the paulette, a tax on offices from 1604, was a successful attempt to tax the normally exempt privileged venal office-holders in return for their right to pass on their offices to their heirs.
The 17th c. witnessed a massive increase in taxation from the 1630s until the end of the reign of Louis XIV; in an attempt to tax the privileged orders, new wartime direct taxes were invented with the capitation of 1695 and the dixième of 1710. The vingtième appeared in 1749, and its attempt to tax even the privileged in peacetime created a crisis smaller in scale but similar in kind to the crisis over the reforms of 1787 [see
Throughout the ancien régime the monarchy's fiscal system was nearly inadequate and gave rise to several partial bankruptcies. This led to reliance for funds first, from the 16th c., on bankers, and second, in the 17th c., when royal needs outstripped the provision, on financiers or traitants. It was then that a system developed in which revenue was advanced by financiers, closely allied with courtly families, providing funds at high rates of interest. The huge fortunes made by some of these made them a target of bitter satire in the late 17th c. Corruption was endemic in the fiscal and financial system, to which the monarchy was tied, unable to reform itself for fear of antagonizing too many vested interests.
[Peter Campbell]
Bibliography
- F. Hinckner, Les Français devant l'impôt sous l'ancien régime (1971)
