Taille

The taille was a direct land tax on the peasantry and other non-nobles of the Third Estate in Ancien Régime France, levied on each household according to the land it held and paid directly to the state. At first an exceptional tax raised in times of need, it became permanent in 1439, when Charles VII was granted the right to tax for a standing army during the Hundred Years' War. Clergy, nobles, crown officers, soldiers, magistrates and towns such as Paris were exempt. Roughly half of royal income in the 1570s, it rose from 2.5 million livres in 1515 to a record 21 million in 1589, and became one of the most hated taxes of the Ancien Régime.