Alpha Book

[Sidenote: Direct Taxes]
[Sidenote: The Income Tax]
[Sidenote: The Poll Tax]
The direct taxes were the prop of the treasury, for they could be
increased to meet the demand, at least as long as the people would pay.
There were three direct taxes--the _taille_, the _capitation_, and the
_vingtieme_. The _vingtieme_, or "twentieth," was a tax on incomes--5
per cent [Footnote: Five per cent in theory; in practice in the reign
of Louis XVI it was 11 per cent] on the salary of the judge, on the
rents of the noble, on the earning of the artisan, on the produce of
the peasant. The clergy were entirely exempted from this tax; the more
influential nobles and bourgeois contrived to have their incomes
underestimated, and the burden fell heaviest on the poorer classes.
_Capitation_ was a general poll or head tax, varying in amount
according to whichever of twenty-two classes claimed the individual
taxpayer. Maid-servants, for example, paid annually three _livres_ and
twelve _sous_. [Footnote: A _livre_ was worth about a _franc_ (20
cents) and a _sou_ was equivalent to one cent.


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