What do Taxes look like?

[LordCdrMilitant]

I just have to mention that, any time I've seen taxes, tolls, dues, licenses, or the like come up in a game, the PCs have treated it as an encounter to be overcome, oftentimes going to great lengths and spending far more cash and effort to avoid it than it would have simply to pay up.

Players are like engineers. We're willing to do a lot of work to get out of doing something that would be substantially easier to just do.

XKCD

[PhoenixPhyre]

I just have to mention that, any time I've seen taxes, tolls, dues, licenses, or the like come up in a game, the PCs have treated it as an encounter to be overcome, oftentimes going to great lengths and spending far more cash and effort to avoid it than it would have simply to pay up.

As I've heard it said, the D&D scale of threats (as seen by players) goes like

Threaten me with death? Facing a overpowering fight? Yawn. That's Tuesday.

Threaten one of my characters' loved ones? Meh.

Threaten to take my stuff? Threaten the party mascot [1]? YOU AND EVERYONE YOU EVER CARED ABOUT ARE GOING TO DIE, HORRIBLY, RIGHT NOW. And we will go through literal hell to stop you/get it back.

[1] I dunno about your parties, but my parties tend to adopt some random NPC as a party mascot. And then get super protective of them. Irrationally so.

[Satinavian]

I don't actually think this works logically.

I still don't see a problem with taking a cut from every magic item sale. It is not that you have so many enchanters/magic item traders that you need a huge bureaucracy for it. And you would probably want to keep an eye on magic item circulation and production anyway for other reasons. And it is not that such a tax would hurt magic item traders/crafters any more than taxation hurts other traders/crafters.

But i also don't see much of a problem with saying that "buy at full price, sell at half price" just covers paying taxes as well. Taxes are ultimately boring and D&D economies are irredeemably messed up and you don't want to look too closely at them.

In systems that have it, i also assume that "lifestyle costs" include all the corresponding taxes for living such a life.

[VoxRationis]

I don't actually think this works logically.

I don't think such stores could reliably remain in business keeping up a stock of items they exclusively sell to adventurers. Even if they work on commission and also deliver high value magic weapons/armor/etc. to nobles and other people, that's not a lot of deliveries a year and definitely not cause to keep a stock of ready-to-buy adventuring items unless they're also selling a decent turnover of more regular stuff.

Presumably, much like how a blacksmith typically made more horseshoes and shovels than swords and armor, I assume ye olde enchanter also primarily is delivering things like hoes of extra-earth-turning or nails of staying over spending all his time catering to a very small group of people who will buy something maybe once every few months.



And as far as gate taxes go, you also don't want to hit regular merchants too hard and starve your lands for trade.

You seem to be asserting that low-volume, high-value industries don't exist, which is untrue for every historical period. (Indeed, it is only with the industrial revolution that high-volume, low-value industries became the massively profitable enterprises they are today.) Your average blacksmith doesn't make any swords and armor and leaves those specialized skills to dedicated armorsmiths and swordsmiths who do make such things the majority of their business.

As for gate taxes, 1) they did exist historically, and 2) I was speaking about a weapons-at-gate tax, probably on an escalating scale, to target the highly unusual practice adventurers have of walking around with more weapons than a kitted-out Roman legionary. Your average merchant isn't going to try to enter a city carrying a dagger, halberd, crossbow, silver-coated sword, and mace.

[Talakeal]

But i also don't see much of a problem with saying that "buy at full price, sell at half price" just covers paying taxes as well. Taxes are ultimately boring and D&D economies are irredeemably messed up and you don't want to look too closely at them.

I tried that once.

My players response was to simply tell me that they should just kill the NPCs and take the items because it was more cost effective.

[Satinavian]

I don't have players that do that.

If I had, I would react to PCs trying to kill tax collectors by bringing down the full force of the gouvernment and kill their characters.

[Jay R]

What do medieval taxes look like? Quite often, they look like cows, or grain, or other foodstuffs. In 7th century Wessex, an estate of ten hides owed 10 vats of honey, 300 loaves, 12 ambers of Welsh ale, 30 ambers of clear ale, 2 full-grown cows or 10 wethers, 10 geese, 20 hens, 10 cheeses, a full amber of butter, 5 salmon, 20 pounds in weight of fodder, and 100 eels.

We have an absurdly inflated notion of how much wealth in that period was in the form of money.

[Nifft]

I tried that once.

My players response was to simply tell me that they should just kill the NPCs and take the items because it was more cost effective.

One solution to that is the Amazon model.

You pay me now, I deliver your stuff later.

[John Campbell]

... and 100 eels.

Min oferglidendescip is ælful.

We have an absurdly inflated notion of how much wealth in that period was in the form of money.

As I understand it, England in particular had serious cash supply issues for many, many years because of the incredible amount of precious metal that left the island as Danegeld.

[Segev]

I just have to mention that, any time I've seen taxes, tolls, dues, licenses, or the like come up in a game, the PCs have treated it as an encounter to be overcome, oftentimes going to great lengths and spending far more cash and effort to avoid it than it would have simply to pay up.

Oddly, in ToA, my party was scrupulous about paying the fees to the Flaming Fist, though they were ruthless about negotiating them down.

I tried that once.

My players response was to simply tell me that they should just kill the NPCs and take the items because it was more cost effective.

If that's their response, they should be treated like bandits everywhere their deeds are known. Also, remind them that others may take up the same attitude towards them, and simply beat them up to take their stuff.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Of course. "Sin Taxes" in weapons and adventuring gear are probably the only way to get adventurers to pay their fair share towards the roads they're using in a D&D setting. That said, it's not ideal, because anything specifically targeting adventurers would be pretty easy to evade or be more damaging to legitimate businesses.

Maybe that's why 10-foot poles are more expensive than ladders. Adventurers go through poles a lot faster than ladders, after all, and legitimate businesses usually have other tools to do anything they'd need a big stick for.

In game worlds where they exist, that works. In my groups, after a certain point most loot eventually ends up in strongholds, sailing ships, etc.

Once you start investing in land and mercantile ventures and whatnot, you're either part of the aristocracy (and therefore more likely to help the taxman exploit the peasantry than be targeted) or part of the "new rich" with assets that are very easy to tax (or seize if you don't pay up).

Supposedly - though I am not sure how true this is - one way taxes were once collected was that tax collectors were men who literally bought the right to do so. They'd go to a lord who had tax-right over his territory, and pay him a bulk sum (or promise him a set amount), and get a license to go out and take money from people in the area and call it "taxation." He got to keep whatever overage he made beyond what he promised (or everything, if he paid up front). How, exactly, this worked puzzles me enough that I doubt I either a) understand it correctly or b) heard it truthfully described, since I'm unclear how much authority he has to make demands and enforce them, nor what limits him if he has such authority.

That's how it worked for at least part of the Roman Republic's history. I'm pretty sure they were restricted to only charging legal taxes, rather than inventing tax codes on the spot.

The other thing, though, is that taxes were also "rent," essentially, in the classic feudal structure. Serfs worked the land they were assigned, and were permitted to keep the majority of the crops and such they produced, but their lords took some of it as their due. My understanding is that the percentages were low, because production was so low that serfs would starve if they were much higher. Some did, anyway. I think 10% was considered cruelly burdensome.

1/11th or 1/17th are common numbers for serfs. Though as that page also notes, serfs and other low-class farmers would sometimes work land belonging to large landholders (whoever that might be in a given society) in addition to working their own farms. As noted in the prior entry in the series, peasant farms tended to support more hands than could efficiently work the land they owned, so they looked for opportunities to use that excess labor elsewhere.

I don't actually think this works logically.

I don't think such stores could reliably remain in business keeping up a stock of items they exclusively sell to adventurers. Even if they work on commission and also deliver high value magic weapons/armor/etc. to nobles and other people, that's not a lot of deliveries a year and definitely not cause to keep a stock of ready-to-buy adventuring items unless they're also selling a decent turnover of more regular stuff.

Presumably, much like how a blacksmith typically made more horseshoes and shovels than swords and armor, I assume ye olde enchanter also primarily is delivering things like hoes of extra-earth-turning or nails of staying over spending all his time catering to a very small group of people who will buy something maybe once every few months.


And as far as gate taxes go, you also don't want to hit regular merchants too hard and starve your lands for trade.

First off, I'm not sure medieval-style lords would mind driving off merchants (I swear I'm going to find some reason to link to every post in that series today, even the rice one).

More relevantly, you're asserting the economic inviability of producing a small number of high-profit items, which a glance at basically any economy does not bear out. To pick an obvious example, ships are also extremely expensive and purchased only rarely and by a small segment of the population, but they're built and sold for profit. If it takes you a whole year to forge and enchant a magic sword, you just need to sell the sword for enough that the profit pays for at least a year's expenses.
Obviously, there wouldn't be a lot of artificers churning out expensive adventuring gear, but there could be some. (Unless magic items are rare artifacts from a bygone era, found rather than forged, which doesn't support any magic-mart model.)

We have an absurdly inflated notion of how much wealth in that period was in the form of money.

I disagree with the way you phrased this. People don't have any notion of how much wealth was in the form of money, they just project their understanding of the economy into prior eras due to lack of data. (Also, what period is "that period"?)
But yes, societies where most people regularly used money were rare. That said, that's a point that doesn't matter much for D&D-style games, because those worlds do have heavily-monetized societies. Any village the players come across will have an inn the players can pay money to sleep at, desperate villagers who pay for the PCs' aid with spare change, taciturn locals willing to open up for a cash bribe, etc. These things exist because cash economies are convenient for the players, of course, but they still exist, and treating the setting as if they didn't would be ridiculous.

[Max_Killjoy]

Is there a good place to look at how monetized vs not various historical economies were?

Not just "generic quasi-medieval-land", but actual regions of Europe, different time frames, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Republic and Empire, different periods of Chinese history, etc?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Is there a good place to look at how monetized vs not various historical economies were?

Not just "generic quasi-medieval-land", but actual regions of Europe, different time frames, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Republic and Empire, different periods of Chinese history, etc?

My attempts to find a good resource were immediately stifled by realizing that the word "monetization" has a bunch of other uses.

My understanding is that monetized economies are very rare, since money is only accepted if money is useful and money is only useful it money is accepted. It seems like monetized economies need to be started by a large central state which can produce both a supply of currency and a demand for it by paying its soldiers/officials in coin and demanding taxes in coin respectively. Rome at its heights were more monetized societies than most of its immediate predecessors, successors, and neighbors; I think China was similar. Not sure about Greece, but I imagine its urban centers were more monetized than its rural hinterlands.

Still, if anyone has any good sources for this kind of information, I'd be glad to hear it.

[t209]

Rome at its heights were more monetized societies than most of its immediate predecessors, successors, and neighbors

Until the Crisis of Third Century, which the entire tax system was revamped to Barter system.
Also the land after finishing duty as a soldier became upfront payment, more so in Alexios era.

[Chronic]

Also the feudal periods in areas with economically significant trade saw a fair amount of tolls associated with bridges, roads, canals, gates, and docks. Essentially anywhere that bottlenecked you cound set a guard and collect a tax. What was taxed, who was taxed, and what it was used for all varied.

In some places it could be by horse/oxen/axle (merchants & wealthy) and the proceeds go mainly towards road/canal upkeep & keeping banditry down. A lord could give a ferry crossing to a vassal and require it to be defended, maintained to support & transport 100 horsemen at any time, and be a decent sized depot/fortification during wars, plus succor & support to anyone with a letter from the lord. A town could place a consumption tax at the gates based on how wealthy you looked plus assessing a "peace tax/bond" for weapons or armor.

Historically some places taxed based on building ground floor square footage or on the number of glass windows. Some places citizenry (even peasants, which means different things in different times & places) could be "taxed" with keeping arms & armor plus being part of a militia. The people governing often taxed what was nailed down in some fashon and "who pays" just worked it's way around in prices & trade. But access & permission could be taxed too. Letters or liscenses letting someone buy/sell particular goods, exempting them from tolls, or even just being allowed to pass through an area, were a thing to be bought/rewarded.

This are very very good examples. I'll add to that that in medieval Era, the monopoly on a few first necessity product such as salt was an important source of revenue for state or local authorities and was as such an indirect way of taxation (funny story, the word salary actually comes from the Latin word for a salt ration, which was sometime used to pay workers).

A more modern means was a cut on every source of incomes (property, Industry, liberal profession etc) designed to replace older types of taxes and was usually either 5 or 10% of the global incomes of an household.

[Satinavian]

Is there a good place to look at how monetized vs not various historical economies were?

Not just "generic quasi-medieval-land", but actual regions of Europe, different time frames, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Republic and Empire, different periods of Chinese history, etc?

Not really.

As always, it is super complicated. The benefits of money are that it doesn't expire, is easy to move and store and its value can be judged without expert knowledge. All of these are nice and people did recognize those and generally did prefer coin. Coin acceptance was never a big hurdle compared to goods acceptance. Those are easily measurable chunks of precious metals after all, whereas you are only inclined to take goods if you have a use for them or know someone who has.

But when those benefits were not important, they were willing to use other things. Which means, money-less economies were often more local. The peasants did not produce coin. They produced grain and animals etc. They paid their taxes in those. The lord, getting his tax in stuff, not money and far more of that than his family will use is incentived to pay his retainers in stuff as well. That is where you get contracts that include half an oxen per year as part of renumeration for an architect.

At the same time, when value had to be moved far or people didn't trust each other that much or people wanted to be sure of its value, money was preferrably used. You will find that merchants used more money but the nobility handled ransom and other similar payments preferrably with money as well.

So it is less "how much of the economy is money based" and more "what kind of transaction is it".

As for getting real numbers, let's say that can be difficult. There are not really proper trade statistics for medieval times. You will have accounting of single medium sized institution like monasteries and maybe merchants. You will have treaties and laws. You might have court cases with some numbers and disagreements. But for the whole picture, guesswork will be involved a lot.

[snowblizz]

Is there a good place to look at how monetized vs not various historical economies were?

Not just "generic quasi-medieval-land", but actual regions of Europe, different time frames, Ancient and Hellenistic Greece, the Roman Republic and Empire, different periods of Chinese history, etc?

There is a whole field of economics history dealing with it. Rondo Cameron, Fernand Braudel, Peter Spufford some of the authors who have opined on the subject that I read form the local library. In translation so I can't give names of the works that'd help you. The last one had a very good book about "money and power" or some such that had a lot to say about money in mediaeval Europe. Quite eye-opening.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Until the Crisis of Third Century, which the entire tax system was revamped to Barter system.
Also the land after finishing duty as a soldier became upfront payment, more so in Alexios era.

I'd question whether the third century counts as one of Rome's heights, but it took a while to collapse properly; it probably had some heights after that. My bad.

As always, it is super complicated. The benefits of money are that it doesn't expire, is easy to move and store and its value can be judged without expert knowledge. All of these are nice and people did recognize those and generally did prefer coin. Coin acceptance was never a big hurdle compared to goods acceptance. Those are easily measurable chunks of precious metals after all, whereas you are only inclined to take goods if you have a use for them or know someone who has.

I'm gonna need a citation for this claim, because it goes against everything I've heard on the subject.
First of all, several of the things you list as benefits are drawbacks under certain circumstances; it's a lot easier for roving bandits or "foraging" soldiers to take a stash of coins than a pile of farming tools or whatever, specifically because coins are easier to move and store (and more fungible). At the same time, while coins can be easily measured, they're only valuable if you can trade them for other goods, which can only happen if the people owning those goods considers coins valuable, which requires them to be able to trade them for still other goods. In short, money is only valuable if it's valuable, which only happens under certain economic conditions.

Yes, there are classes of people for whom money is always valuable. Nobles, merchants, perhaps some craftsmen. But they are an overwhelming minority of the population.

[jayem]

At the same time, while coins can be easily measured, they're only valuable if you can trade them for other goods, which can only happen if the people owning those goods considers coins valuable, which requires them to be able to trade them for still other goods. In short, money is only valuable if it's valuable, which only happens under certain economic conditions.

Until fairly recently, coins (in theory) had their actual value in terms of being a lump of metal. The coin aspect saved all the validation aspects. And even after then it was still 'backed' by the real thing. So to some extent the value is pre-existing. In England or China a pound sterling was worth exactly the same (wrt how much they valued 453g/373g of Silver). The same is of course also true of flour.

The theft swings both ways too, you can't hide your farming tools, you can't emigrate with your land.

Although then I think the definitions of what is monetary get messy. Which isn't going to help (especially when mixed with chronological/regional superiority).

[Nifft]

Until fairly recently, coins (in theory) had their actual value in terms of being a lump of metal. The coin aspect saved all the validation aspects. And even after then it was still 'backed' by the real thing. So to some extent the value is pre-existing. In England or China a pound sterling was worth exactly the same (wrt how much they valued 453g/373g of Silver). The same is of course also true of flour.

The theft swings both ways too, you can't hide your farming tools, you can't emigrate with your land.

Although then I think the definitions of what is monetary get messy. Which isn't going to help (especially when mixed with chronological/regional superiority).

When you look at the debt-scrip used in Mesopotamian cities ~5,000 years ago, the value wasn't in the material.

Precious metal coinage as currency is a more recent development.

[Calthropstu]

There are several different types of taxation methods, needs, uses. Too many to mention. But I can give you a few examples that I have built for games and have seen used.

Undead taxation:
Believe it or not, an undead ruler profits most by having a prosperous and happy living population. Instilling a death tax and then offering to waive the death tax in exchange for the body allows for perpetual targets for animate dead. The only needs at that point is weaponry and armor for the undead soldiers.

An undead ruling class can perpetuate itself and never need to increase. So they would make taxation things like weapons for their army and satisfaction of whatever predilictions they may have (blood for vampires, meat for ghouls etc.) Most of it can be supplied with zero gp cost. Merely make the smith guild give a certain number of weapons per year and you're good. This allows your population to live virtually tax free enabling a very healthy society.

Post Scarcity:
When a society invents reconstructive teleportation (see Star Trek) all objective taxations are meaningless. Instead, service taxation in the form of a set amount of military or civil services would be required. Even in a society where ecerything can be given to you with the push of a button, there are things that need to be done. Entertainment, government, teaching, scienctific advancement... these and more would still be needed.

Apocalyptic:
Civilization has fallen. The bandit king desires all. Rape and pillage everything. If the riffraff want to eat, they can grovel at your doorstep. Everything is taken from everyone. Each day, the bandit king decides who gets what. He sentences people to starvation if they don't produce. He gives attractive women more than their fair share in exchange for access to them. This dying wotld is his to command for he is the last of the strong. His desires are everything.

Sales tax:
Everyone pays an equal amount at time of sale of goods. Each purchase is taxed and tracked at a set valur. Business' books are tracked and audited regularly.

Income tax:
Everyone who earns money needs to give you some of it.

Interstellar Empires:
Once a civilization goes interstellar, there are only a few ways it can be sustained. Capitalism can't sustain itself at that point. Socialism will have a lot of trouble. The reason being is space travel requires MASSIVE resources. For example, building a single star destroyer would bankrupt the entirety of Earth. Even current intrastellar space exploration is prohibitively expensive for most nations.

It is impossible to do with modern models. So the only way it becomes possible is for full globalization of government followed by that government razing uninhabitable planets in their solar system, followed by using those resources to go to new planets to pretty much ransack for their resources. Eventually, planets will be designated for specific purposes. Taxation woild be high... possibly even 100%. But everyone would get what they needed. Basically a communistic society with 100% participation.

[Brother Oni]

Until fairly recently, coins (in theory) had their actual value in terms of being a lump of metal. The coin aspect saved all the validation aspects. And even after then it was still 'backed' by the real thing. So to some extent the value is pre-existing. In England or China a pound sterling was worth exactly the same (wrt how much they valued 453g/373g of Silver). The same is of course also true of flour.

There are also varying shenanigans for coinage involving the value of the raw material amount versus its fiat value.

In Japan, around about the start of the Edo period, they switched from a silver standard (coins being worth their weight in fine silver) to a fiat currency. They also took the opportunity to debase the coinage, so a monme was no longer ~80% fine silver, but ~20% fine silver.

Unfortunately, foreign traders wanted paying in fine silver, so goods that used to cost 100 monme, now effectively cost 400 monme. This tied in very nicely with the then desired goal of limiting external trade among other things.


China of the same approximately period did the same, although by a different method of only accepting payment in silver. All the western nations were on a gold standard though and rapidly went through all their silver stockpiles to keep up with the voracious demand for Chinese goods. The British found a way around the limitation (by selling opium to the Chinese people for silver), which sparked off the Opium Wars.

[jayem]

There are also varying shenanigans for coinage involving the value of the raw material amount versus its fiat value.
.

That sort of thing is why I had 'in theory', but that is an impressively extreme example.

One thing I did see that I thought was quite interesting (on Wiki) was the distinction between the 'Monetary as accounts' and 'Monetary as trade' aspects of Monetary systems. Which seems a useful distinction to keep in mind, especially for Taxation where both could be relevant.

So where medieval accounts tally up workings owed and received,or the Mesopotamian debt scrip* would be Monetary as accounts.
While the shekel (precious metal as currency, but not formalised as coinage, and also about 5000 years old) would be Monetary as trade

*Nifft do you have more specific info (I know some of the stuff they did)

[Nifft]

*Nifft do you have more specific info (I know some of the stuff they did)

My recommendation for this subject is https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-.../dp/1612191290

Note that I am not saying Mesopotamia was special in this regard -- for at least 3k years, people built economies which were surprisingly modern in some regards, and the myth that the ancient economies were simple or "barter" based is simply false. I'm just using ancient Mesopotamia since it's got name-recognition value, and it's fairly easy to find scholarship around their economies.