Typically taxes work both through goods in kind and coin, and like everything, depends on the time period. There are always exceptions that prove rules, but typically, the further back you go, the more taxes were paid in kind rather than in coin. The typical rate was 10% for the lord and 10% for the Church and based on property holdings, this was established as early as the 8th century. There was a poll tax of one shilling per head proposed in 1380 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but poll taxes formed the Islamic jizya tax levied on Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in the caliphates. Swedish taxes were assessed in equivalencies, such as coins or 16 kg of butter.
Medieval peasants often paid taxes as percentages of goods in kind, unfree labor, and coin which again, depended on the era and where you were. You would pay for using the lord’s mill to mill the grain with a percentage of the take, similarly you would press wine at the lord’s wine press and pay a percentage of the wine. There were certain amounts of days that peasants had to labor in the lord’s fields (24 in Sweden during the Late Middle Ages). You would also have your holdings assessed to see what the value was, and then contract out to tax farmers who would raise that amount of money via tax collection, and whether it was the Byzantine pronoia, the Muslim iqta, or the Western European fee-farm, the process was the same. The farmer would pay the crown (typically competing for the privilege similar to an auction) for the right to raise taxes from a particular area. The incentive was, once the farmer reached the desired amount, any extra was his to keep, which encouraged tax farmers to squeeze taxes out of the peasantry, first to make up the bribes and fees he paid to gain the revenue farm and then to profit. Kings in the 14th century, with the growth of centralized bureaucracy, came to rely more upon direct taxation.
Nobles typically had their obligations set out by the feudal contract and royal writ. In early feudalism, the tax was not monetary, but military service, just as the peasantry owed service to their lords. The vassalage contract stipulated what was owed on behalf of the vassal, and kings might forego the traditional feudal service of levies for a scutage, set by the king, this became true in the later Middle Ages. Emergencies would cause for additional taxes, such as the Saladin tax that King Richard the Lionheart levied for the Third Crusade.
@racefortheironthrone, anything to add?
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
You’ve covered most of it (very comprehensively, I might add), but I would also add some important sources of revenue:
- Customs duties: very important source of both revenue and trade policy. The English wool tariff of a mark (2/3 of a pound) per sack of wool dates back to 1275, and it was a major driver of English economic policy, as the state now had a vested interest in encouraging the production and sale abroad of wool to the Lowlands. Later on, for example, a tax called the “maltolt” was added on top of the tariff and then exempted for English merchants (after a fight with Parliament about whether, as a tax on English merchants, it violated the legal statutes that stated that domestic taxes had to be consented to by Parliament) in a clear bid to try to crack into the merchant side of the wool trade. Eventually, there would be different tariffs for wool vs. raw wool cloth vs. finished wool, in an attempt to climb the chain of value-added.
- Ship Money: another royal privilege that managed to escape the Magna Carta, this was a requirement that towns and counties (historically those towns and counties along the coasts, but Charles I got himself in a lot of trouble by taxing all towns and counties) pay for the construction and maintenance of the Royal Navy.
Also, to elaborate on some things mentioned in OP: in England, the poll taxes of the 14th century were highly unpopular for several reasons. The war with France wasn’t going well, John of Gaunt wasn’t popular, there was massive resistance to paying a regressive tax, and enforcement involved (in an act of historically impressive bureaucratic stability) checking the virginity of daughters to see if they counted as dependents. Hence the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 was sparked by an attempt to collect poll taxes, and they were basically thereafter dropped until Charles I tried them again, and then when Maggie Thatcher went for a third round.
Second, the 10% tax on property levied by Parliament had a couple wrinkles. First, it was historically set as a tenth for towns and a fifteenth for rural counties because when have rural areas not tried to shaft urban areas. Second, after the mid-14th century, the tax was collected collectively rather than individually: a given town or county would be given the responsibility to raise a certain amount, and then the local notables would raise the money from among themselves and from the commons.
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