taxation

[frankq]

I'm posting in this forum because it concerns the below at Livius.org, which is a very effective academic website and provides a wealth of information.

 

Judaea now became an autonomous part of the Roman province Syria, ruled by a prefect. Quirinius was ordered to organize the taxation of the new prefecture. Until then, taxes had been paid in kind. However, during the census which Quirinius organized, the inhabitants were required to declare their property in money. There are no indications that the Roman money taxes were higher than the taxes they replaced, but taxes in money were more onerous than taxes in kind, because a farmer had to borrow in case of a poor harvest. Besides, any Roman coin would bear an image of the goddess Roma or a legend saying that the man represented was the divine emperor: a violation of at least two of the ten commandments.

 

I can find this nowhere else. Not in Josephus, nor any other book on Judea. Large parts of the Empire still were at a stage where payment had to be made in goods and services. Was it mandatory to pay up in coin once a province?

[frankq]

I also found this RE taxation in Britain:

 

The Romans brought their own method of taxation which meant each tribe had to pay a levy to a central government based on the yield of crops and consumable items that they produced.

 

How was this levy paid though, in kind or in coin? A levy based on services is all well and good but for the vast majority of citizens coin was not something readily available.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

As a result of such abuses, tax farming was replaced by direct taxation early in the Empire. The provinces now paid a wealth tax of about 1 percent and a flat poll or head tax on each adult. This obviously required regular censuses in order to count the taxable population and assess taxable property. It also led to a major shift in the basis of taxation. Under the tax farmers, taxation was largely based on current income. Consequently, the yield varied according to economic and climactic conditions. Since tax farmers had only a limited time to collect the revenue to which they were entitled, they obviously had to concentrate on collecting such revenue where it was most easily available. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. And since tax farmers were essentially bidding against a community's income potential, this meant that a large portion of any increase in income accrued to the tax farmers.

 

HERE'S an interesting article from the Cato Journal which covers among other things taxation.

[frankq]

As a result of such abuses, tax farming was replaced by direct taxation early in the Empire. The provinces now paid a wealth tax of about 1 percent and a flat poll or head tax on each adult. This obviously required regular censuses in order to count the taxable population and assess taxable property. It also led to a major shift in the basis of taxation. Under the tax farmers, taxation was largely based on current income. Consequently, the yield varied according to economic and climactic conditions. Since tax farmers had only a limited time to collect the revenue to which they were entitled, they obviously had to concentrate on collecting such revenue where it was most easily available. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. And since tax farmers were essentially bidding against a community's income potential, this meant that a large portion of any increase in income accrued to the tax farmers.

 

HERE'S an interesting article from the Cato Journal which covers among other things taxation.

 

Interesting link, thanks. But either something's escaped me or I'm just plain intellectually challenged. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. So does this answer my original question, did the Romans permit Judean farmers and Briton tribesmen to pay taxes in kind or were they forced to render coin? Mommsen mentions that payment in kind was made. I have found no other direct statement to this effect.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

Interesting link, thanks. But either something's escaped me or I'm just plain intellectually challenged. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. So does this answer my original question, did the Romans permit Judean farmers and Briton tribesmen to pay taxes in kind or were they forced to render coin? Mommsen mentions that payment in kind was made. I have found no other direct statement to this effect.

 

I'm not sure whether this was the case during the time of Vespasian but during the reign of Diocletian and his reforms it appears that since money had become almost worthless, the new system he had come up with was based on collecting taxes in the form of actual goods and services, but regularized into a budget so that the state knew exactly what it needed and taxpayers knew exactly how much they had to pay.

 

It was a very clever and a very fair way of collecting the taxes that empire needed but without impoverishing the less wealthy along the way. So in theory instead of saying we want 'X' amount from every landholder regardless of the size of the property, they took a massive census of every landowner and then worked out the size of the payment accordingly.

 

"Fields were measured out clod by clod, vines and trees were counted, every kind of animal was registered, and note taken of every member of the population." Lactantius.