Taille

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.

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.

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.

Their role steadily increased and by the mid 17th century, the généralités were under the authority of an intendant, and they became a vehicle for the expansion of royal power in matters of justice, taxation, and policing.

In 1680, the system of the Ferme Générale was established, a franchised customs and excise operation in which individuals bought the right to collect the taille on behalf of the king, through six-year adjudications (some taxes, including the aides and the gabelle, had been farmed out in this way as early as 1604).

The taille became a major source of royal income (roughly half in the 1570s), the most important direct tax of pre-Revolutionary France, and provided for the growing cost of warfare in the 15th and 16th centuries.

This tax was based solely on revenues (5% of net earnings from land, property, commerce, industry and from official offices), and was meant to reach all citizens regardless of status, but the clergy, the regions with "pays d'état" and the parlements protested; the clergy won exemption, the "pays d'état" won reduced rates, and the parlements halted new income statements, effectively making the "vingtième" a far less efficient tax than it was designed to be.