Question

how was the taxation policy responsible for the French revolution? Explain

Answer 1

Taxation is a burning issue in many revolutions – and it was a significant cause of grievance in late 18th century France. National debt and personal taxation were economic dilemmas that plagued French leaders, who pondered how to lessen the former without increasing the latter. There was little scope for reducing debt, thanks to decades of fight-now-pay-later foreign policy and profligate spending by the royal court. In the meantime France’s people, especially the farmers and workers in the Third Estate, suffered under one of the highest-taxing regimes in Europe. The level of taxation in France was significantly higher than in Britain because French trade interests were smaller, so income from tariffs and customs duties pumped less revenue into the treasury. Now, the ancien regime had reached a point where temporary measures and patch-up responses could no longer be used; a serious overhaul of the taxation system was essential.

“The fiscal system of the ancien regime also suffered from at least two other grave faults. The first, a relatively minor one, [was] that the actual collection of taxes that were so complex proved extremely expensive; the second, which was far graver, consisted in the system’s uneconomic character. The taille, owing in the main to the way it was collected, gave the peasants every encouragement not only to deceive and to defraud but also to curb their production.”