Taille

The taille (French pronunciation: ​[taj]) was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien Régime France. The tax was imposed on each household and was based on how much land it held.

Originally only an "exceptional" tax (i.e. imposed and collected in times of need, as the king was expected to survive on the revenues of the "domaine royal", or lands that belonged to him directly), the taille became permanent in 1439, when the right to collect taxes in support of a standing army was granted to Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Unlike modern income taxes, the total amount of the taille was first set (after the Estates General was suspended in 1484) by the French king from year to year, and this amount was then apportioned among the various provinces for collection.

Exempted from the tax were clergy and nobles (except for non-noble lands they held in "pays d'état" [see below]), officers of the crown, military personnel, magistrates, university professors and students, and franchises (villes franches) such as Paris.

The provinces were of three sorts, the pays d'élection, the pays d'état and the pays d'imposition. In the pays d'élection (the longest held possessions of the French crown; some of these provinces had had the equivalent autonomy of a pays d'état in an earlier period, but had lost it through the effects of royal reforms) the assessment and collection of taxes were entrusted to elected officials (at least originally; later, these positions were bought), and the tax was generally "personal", meaning it was attached to non-noble individuals. In the pays d'état ("provinces with provincial estates" Brittany, Languedoc, Burgundy, Auvergne, Béarn, Dauphiné, Provence, and such portions of Gascony as Bigorre, Comminges, and the Quatre-Vallées; these recently acquired provinces had been able to maintain a certain local autonomy in terms of taxation), the assessment of the tax was established by local councils and the tax was generally "real", meaning that it was attached to non-noble lands (that is, even nobles possessing such lands were required to pay taxes on them). Finally, pays d'imposition were recently conquered lands which had their own local historical institutions (they were similar to the pays d'état under which they are sometimes grouped), although taxation was overseen by the royal intendant.

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