Taxing the rich: Compliance and fairness in community-based taxation – lessons from Paris in the middle ages

a column by Al Slivinski and Nathan Sussman for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The problem of tax compliance is as old as the levying of taxes. Innovations in tax administration that induce high compliance rates at reasonable cost are extremely important to governments.

This column demonstrates how the taille, a tax collection mechanism from medieval Paris, raised compliance by turning the social cost of tax evasion into a private one. It offers a tax collection model that is still relevant to governments today.

Continue reading

---