Fiscal Tradition and Innovation in Italy, 1350–1650

The chapter deals with some aspects of taxation in Italian territorial states: the status of taxpayers, the role of competing powers (Church and feudatories) and the attempt to establish a progressive system of taxation. As for taxpayers, the division between urban inhabitants and peasants was one of the most evident features. Such separation was characteristic not just of the areas that had witnessed the expansion of communes and city states, but also in the kingdom of Naples. In the long run, the differences between urban and rural taxpayers faded away significantly, owing to the pressure exerted by emerging elites in rural districts in central-northern Italy. Feudal areas, more broadly diffused in the south than in the north, did not show any significant differences between vassals and taxpayers directly subject to central government’s jurisdiction. Feudal taxation actually took a negligible percentage of the total tax paid by vassals. The exercise of feudatories’ power instead manifested in the control of patronage networks at both local and central level. An aspect of taxation worthy of interest concerns the attempts to impose a graduated tax in fifteenth-century Florence. The political struggle and the financial crisis stimulated the search for more equitable fiscal devices. This innovation, however, did not stabilize. Political limits, first of all, prevented the adoption of a potentially powerful tax instrument. It is widely held that during the early modern age, state taxation succeeded in prevailing over ecclesiastical and feudal competitors. The Italian case shows that from the thirteenth century onward, the tax legitimacy of the state progressively strengthened, but this does not mean that other powers (Church and feudatories) ceded their tax prerogatives in parallel. Fiscal pluralism, instead, grew hand in hand with the formation of the state.