Taxation

Taxation is a mandatory levy placed on the residents of a province or realm by its ruling monarchy. Its purpose is to supply the realm with the labour of workers, the service of trained soldiers, essential food stores, raw and finished materials, public and private services, and sufficient coinage to support the realm's operations and ambitions. The burden of collection and enforcement typically falls upon a vast and often complex bureaucracy, which oversees tax compliance and ensures that each subject delivers the proper amount, in the correct form and at the expected time.

Taxes may be assessed in many ways, depending on local customs, the will of the monarch or the needs of the realm. These may include land taxes, trade levies, harvest tithes or conscription in place of coin. Each method of taxation is explored in more detail through the links below. Failure to meet one's tax obligations is considered a grave offense. The state may seize land or possessions, impose forced debt or bondage, imprison the offender or even carry out execution, depending on the severity of the offense and the customs of the realm.

Game Use

Naturally, players don't like to pay taxes, and given that most adventurers hardly remain in one place for long, this list of taxes should have limited impact on play. Occasionally, they may have to cough up tolls to cross a bridge or a fee to enter a town, but for the most part they'll skirt the costs that ordinary residents have to pay.

Most of the taxes described here are useful to the players as tools they'll eventually use to extract wealth from the peasants working their lands, serving in their armies or otherwise living under their rule. Players will want to know what levies they can impose, what unusual taxes they might demand and how they can fund their own adventuring goals as landlords, governors or monarchs. This page exists more to empower players in positions of authority than to strip them of their hard-won treasure.

Forms of Taxation

These include:

• Burgage, rent paid to a town or city borough
• Carucage, a tax raised to pay for war or infrastructure projects
• Corvée, unpaid forced labour performed by serfs
• Excise, an indirect tax upon goods and their manufacture
• Geld, tax raised to pay tributes to foreigners
• License Fee, a tax imposed on would-be businesses
• Poll Tax, levied per individual resident
• Property Tax, a level on the value of a property
• Scutage, a fee paid in lieu of military service
• Socage, a portion of crops paid as a fuedal levy
• Tallage, a land tax imposed on feudal residents
• Tax Farming, random pressed taxes imposed on residents
• Tariff, an import or export charge on the movement of goods
• Tithe, payments given to religious authorities
• Toll, a fee charged to travel over a road, bridge, tunnel or waterway

See also,
Coin (symbol)
The Adventure