Taille
The
taille was a direct land
tax on the
French peasantry (since the nobles refused to pay taxes). The tax was imposed on each household and based on how much land they held. It was determined by the French kings from year to year after the
Estates General was suspended in
1484. The taille became a major source of royal income, the most important direct tax of pre-Revolutionary France, and provided for the growing cost of warfare in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The taille was one of the most hated taxes of the
ancien rÃÂégime because
nobles and the
clergy were exempt from it.