44 Essays in taxation
movables should be charged only half as much as movables.1 France thus endeavored to attain by law what England effected by custom. During the fourteenth century the taille came to be the chief direct tax, and in 1439 it was made a permanent annual tax. In Germany, also, the imperial and state direct taxes, in so far as there were any, took the form of general property taxes. The Bede2 or Landbede, the gemeiner Pfennig,3 the Landschoss,4 the Landsteuer,b etc., all followed the example of the local property tax. In Scotland the "costage" paid to England in 1424 was a general property tax. An act of that year directed that a book be prepared, containing the names of the inhabitants with a list of all their goods, including corn and cattle, as evidences of their ability to pay.6 By 1585 it had become customary to apportion the occasional burdens known as stents to the burghs according to their "substance and common good." 7
In the Italian republics the commonwealth was at first supported by the general property tax. In Milan, under the name stima e catastro de herd it is found as early as 1208, and afterwards was levied with such severity that the assessment book was known as the libro del dolore.8 In Genoa it was called colletta.9 In Florence it was known as estimo and played an important role in politics.10 And finally we find in the Netherlands from the earliest times the general property tax
1 Clamageran, Histoire de I'impot en France, i., p. 264.
2 At first a feudal land payment; cf. Hullmann, Deutsche Finanzgeschichte des Mittelalters, p. 133.
3 Lang, Historische Entwickelung der teutschen Steuerverfassungen seit der Karolinger. Berlin, 1793, p. 182.
* Schmoller, "Die Epochen der preussischen Finanzpolitik/' in Jahr-buch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, i. (1877), pp. 35, 42.
6 Hoffmann, Geschichte der direkten Sleuern in Baiern vom Ende des xiii. Jahrhunderts, pp. 11, 17, 39.
9S. H. Turner, The History of Local Taxation in Scotland. Edinburgh, 1908, p. 151.
7 Ibid., p. 152.
e Carli, Relazione del Censimento dello Stato di Milano, ш Custodi's Scrit-iori Classici Italiani, parle moderna, xiv., pp. 184, 185.
9 "Le imposte straordinarie si possono di questa epoca [1252J compren- dere in una sola, la colletta." Canale, Storia dei Genovesi, i., p. 318 (edition of 1844).
10 Villani tells us that it was levied on "cio che chiascuno haveadi stabile e di mobile e di guadagno." Istorie Florentine fino al anno 1348, book x., chap. 17 (vol. vi., p. 26, of Milan edition of 1803).
THE GENERAL PROPERTY TAX 45
known as the schot or the tenth, etc., on bezittungen (possessions;."
The general property tax thus existed throughout all Europe. It was moderately successful because well suited to the period. Although involving an inquisitorial search into every article of the scanty mediaeval stock, as can readily be seen from the detailed schedules of assessments still in existence, the tax was levied chiefly on tangible, physical objects not capable of easy concealment. With the exception of countries like France, where the tax was emasculated by the system of exemptions, it resulted on the whole, during this early period of society, in a tax fairly proportional to the individual faculty. There was a general property tax because there was a very slight differentiation of property.