The Roman empire began as an empire of conquest, which gradually and disjointedly moved along an axis from booty, to indemnities to taxation. The central government's tax-take grew even faster than the area of territory which it controlled, probably because in the last century BCE, Rome conquered the wealthiest kingdoms accessible. In the middle of the third century BC Roman taxes amounted to only 4-8 million HS per year; by 150 BC, revenues had risen sevenfold to 50-60 million HS per year; before the middle of the last century BC, revenues had risen again sixfold to 340 million HS, and had reached about 800 million HS in the middle of the first century CE. In sum, tax revenues had risen one hundredfold in thre centuries. And in real terms, it seems, they did not rise significantly above that level until the third and fourth centuries.
But Roman taxes were low as a proportion of probable gross product. Per capita taxes amounted to only 13 HS per person per year, or at standard farm gate prices (3HS per modius of 6.55kg) 28 kg wheat equivalent per person/year (11% of minimum subsistence). The tax load in wheat terms was more than the English or French governments raised regularly in the seventeenth century, but very much less than they raised in the eighteenth century. Since many inhabitants of the empire produced and consumed significantly more than minimum subsistence, the actual rate of taxation was significantly less than 10%, probably less than 5% of gross product.
Of course, the tax burden was probably not evenly distributed, and taxes transmitted to the central government were probably less than the total of taxes exacted by greedy and corrupt tax-collectors.
Why were Roman taxes so low? Two immediate answers come to mind: one genetic (in the Genesis sense), the other structural. Genetically, taxes the Roman state had set its tax targets only by the need to recover the costs of war and defence. Since it was an empire of conquest, tax-payers were defeated subjects (after 167 BC until the fourth century, the citizen inhabitants of Italy paid no land-tax). And since it was an empire of conquest, the state did not offer its subjects much service: rudimentary justice to prevent violence, roads for speedy military communications, and defence. Tax-collection was the main job of provincial governors. And even by the second century CE, there was only one Roman elite administrator for every 400,000 inhabitants of empire. Roman adminsitrators levied their taxes and by and large provided only peace in return.
Structurally, the Roman state always operated a binary system of beneficiaries. The state shared the profits from conquest with its leaders and to a lesser extent with its soldiers. Public taxes were so low, so that private incomes of the rich, primarily rents from estates, could be higher. Rents and taxes were in competition for a limited surplus. And the aggregate wealth and income of the aristocracy, broadly understood, was probably as great as or greate than the tax income of the central government. That is why emperors in need repeatedly confiscated the estates of the super-rich, both as an expression of their autocratic power, and because these were the biggest assets available in the Roman economy. But even if these stolen estates were incorporated into the private property of the emperors, their management had to be delegated back to an aristocrat (in the broad definition of the term). In sum, aristocratic wealth seriously constrained the central government’s tax-raising powers. And in the Later Empire, rich land-owners’ capacity to resist the central government’s attempts to raise taxes were the rock on which the western empire foundered.
Konst
The Swedish Art Site
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