When did taxation emerge
There is a saying that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. While this may make taxation sound like a strongly embedded idea in society, the historical development of taxes did begin with the rise of early states. However, taxes have been redefined and have conceptually evolved over the centuries, while they still retain their primary goal of funding government interests.
Early History
With the development of complex institutions, in particular governments ruled by kings, taxes became one of the ways such institutions thrived. While we often think of taxes as a set percentage per year that we pay, this might not have been the case in early examples of taxes. One of the earliest form of taxes was corvée, where labor by individuals for a period of time was given to the authorities to construct canals and other infrastructure. This was the case in both Mesopotamia (southern Iraq) and Egypt, where such labor would be required for periods of time from different families living with the state or even towns.
Early records from Mesopotamia, from the early 3rd millennium BCE, also indicate forms of tithes or percentages of obligation that was required from individuals. This could have been traders or normal individuals who owned revenue to institutions, such as temples, and the state. In fact, many scholars see that taxation may have been one of the primary motives for writing to more fully develop by this time in southern Mesopotamia, where written language indicate more sophisticated writing systems by 2900-2500 BCE.
In Egypt, the system may have been even more centralized, where often Pharaoh and the priestly classes held a lot of power. In this case, people and revenue could be conscripted or taxed on regular schedules. The Egyptians justified this by claiming everything belonged to Pharaoh anyway and the percentages sent to the central government in Memphis represented a percentage from the different nomes, or small provinces within Egypt. These obligations helped fuel the major building activity in the Early Dynastic period such as the Great Pyramids in Giza, which helped to reinforce Pharaoh's central authority and thus tax-based system created.
Mesopotamia in the late 3rd millennium BCE, by about 2100 BCE, created another form of taxation that revolved responsibility to different cities and also required different types and amounts of revenue depending on how linked the city was to the central government. Some cities that specialized in agricultural products would be required to sent those products to the central government, while others specializing in wood or other products could send those. These items were collected and deposited in central facilities that acted as a collection point. The system then created a large bureaucratic structure that had many dependents who relied upon taxation from the controlled cities. The state itself would use these resources in redistributing goods to enable building projects or use the goods directly for projects or payments.
Rise of Taxes
The two developments of empires and currency by the mid-1st millennium BCE led to complex tax systems that began to resemble our own systems today. The Achaemenid Empire created a regulated system that was based on earlier systems, such as the Assyrian Empire, but the system began to change as currency began to be more utilised in the Greek-speaking parts of the Empire and the Greek world itself. Provinces now had specific obligations and those obligations had to be met through silver. There were attempts then to standardize revenue collected by the state into a type of currency (e.g., silver) rather than as a variety of products. This also meant that the state now had to understand the land it controlled in more detail, as the types of crops, fruit trees, and other forms of revenue generation had to be identified so that an estimate on tax obligations could be calculated (and thus a budget determined by the state).
The development of coinage allowed the state to obtain funds in new ways. It now created a system where people had to exchange goods or their own currency to obtain local coins. The state now could create favorable exchange rates as a form of revenue generation. Coins, in effect, allowed taxes to be hidden and allowed the authority of the state to be made clear. This caught on in the Aegean and Anatolian cities at first but later began to spread throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. It became clear that currency did not have to be a direct transfer of value on a one to one basis but rather currency could have value potentially above the value of the metal itself, allowing or greater revenue generation by the state as it taxed foreigners coming into the state and citizens as well.
The Roman Empire created a series of specialized taxes that saw it tax things like trade, military obligations, inheritance, sales, religious, slave trade, land, as well as income tax. In effect, the Roman Empire depended on a series of specialized taxes and obligations. While some taxes were obligatory, the state also created a series of tax revenues that could be generated by people using the state's services or performing certain functions (e.g., selling slaves).
In the Medieval period, various forms of taxes developed that included religious as well as state-based taxes. Land taxes, tithes, feudal taxes, and poll tax were typical taxes developed. Earlier systems, such as in England during the Anglo-Saxon period, did not require compulsory taxation but they, instead, used fines as forms of taxation. Norman England created a universal land tax. Taxation, however, became a source of contention, leading to a system where the king would have to get consent from leading individuals and nobles from different regions. Over time, this assembly of nobles that gave consent on taxes helped form the bases of what became Parliament and, eventually, the foundation of modern democratic institutions.
