"Peasants had some protections, as you couldn't tax them too much, or revolts would erupt." *France enters the classroom late* France: Did I miss anything important?
Well how else would they keep fighting long drawn out 18th century wars that generally didn't go anywhere and ended on draws where minor concessions would be made?
@@omayaki5264 yes however every German must pay public health and pension insurance and even if you earn less than 1k per month you still get taxed by 20%. What are you gonna afford with 800€? The cheapest rent you can get is in problem districts with social housing around 400- 500€ . Then you have to pay groceries and due to euro inflation you pay 1,40€ for one 500gramm Butter ( 15 years before you would only pay 20-40¢). So in case you buy low end food you get onto 35€ a week which makes it 140€ a month for Groceries. Plus Water Bill, Electric Bill, Internet, Transportation and you basically have up 90% for basic needs. now imagine feeding a whole family with 1k. And then people are asking why do we get so less children.
@@quotenbalkaner7066 I agree that there is to few social housing and that the wages are too low. But cutting health insurance tax wouldn't really help. Because if you would get sick in the Case you yust mentioned you can simply declare bankruptcy. Imagine paying the hospital bill for your child...
@Justinian the Great Hahaha maybe in the US but not here in Europe. They would be stupid to do so since the speed limit is 100 km/h right now! But seriously keep thinking that taxes are theft while you drive to work on well maintained roads and your trash is taken care off while you complain on the internet. Not paying taxes makes you somewhat of a third world citizen.
@@julianratering8500 Hahaha maybe that is why people in the US are saying taxation is theft because they are not spending it on the people but keeping it for themselves. People are now talking in the US about defunding, abolishing the police. Good luck collecting taxes without some kind of force.
Step 1: Earning a quite nice wage. Step 2: Getting Taxed 50% Step 3: Paying 50% of your net income for the rent and 25% for Food, Clothing Hygiene etc Step 4: ??????? Step 5: actually no Profit because you have to pay your Student loan debt up.
An interesting fact I remember reading is that medieval kings often sold the right to collect taxes rather than directly collecting them. So basically a tax collector would be a sort of entrepeneur who would hunt you down to recover what he’d already paid the king and then some. This scheme led to a lot of abuse and made tax collectors especially detested and the source of revolts
@@rav9066 Several reasons for it, number one being that governments as we think of them today didn’t exist. In the middle ages complex state bureaucracies (such as tax collecting) were in their infancy, so this sort of “outsourcing” solutions were fairly common. Also, medieval kings were often perpetually short on cash, particularly to raise armies to go to war; so they relied a lot on credit and other financing means. The selling of tax collecting rights meant that they had cash now instead of having to wait months and months for it.
@@charu2059 in the Middle Ages everything was "privatised", or rather private, since centralised states with all-consuming public bureacracies didn't become a thing until the early 20th century
Bureaucrats employed directly by the government would have probably been pretty greedy anyways. The society they lived in was not advanced and organized enough to keep track of all those taxes properly.
Short answer is not very often because if you did, you'd be guaranteed to get a visit from a gang of government-paid armed thugs showing up not long after
Well it definitely happened. An extreme example at the end of the Medieval period would be the Earl of Northumberland who was murdered in a riot in York over a tax increase which was ordered by Henry VII to finance a quick war with France
As a side note, at least in Western Europe, it was common practice to record taxes using tallysticks. Essentially they would carve notches into a stick to tally up the money involved and the stick would be split in half, with each party taking one half. That way if there was any dispute later on the halved stick could be produced as a kind of receipt, once the two halves were shown to fit together perfectly then the name written onto the sticks and the notches carved into the stick could then be used to prove what money had been paid, and by who.
@Edward Tay Are you fucking high? Speaking as someone from Romania, that was a communist country till 1989, taxes 100% did exist, the only difference was that there was very little to tax as the government gave all the salaries (and as such took taxes out of your paycheck directly) and private property was nigh on non existent. Also there were social security retirement taxes that actually didn't pay for your retirement instead operating like a Ponzi scheme, with the current investments being used to pay current retired people, something that did no under any circumstances completely backfire when the communists fucked up our demographics too.
Do more videos on Byzantine history!!!! They’re criminally understudied when compared to classical Rome and need to have more entertaining and easily digestible videos like these about them.
@@azh698 Naturally, it is also studied quite a lot in Bulgaria, for obvious reasons *cue one of the most underrated and long lasting rivalries in human history not many people talk about*.
@@joshuaarroyo7235 Is any society comparable to what it was centuries ago? By that standard, no country today should share a name with any from the past. The Eastern Roman Empire was what was left of the Roman Empire, period.
Well, they didn't have eastern in front, that's how the historians call it to distinguish it from the western part. It called itself Roman and no one had any doubt at that time that they were Romans. Except for Carolingians, they thought they were just Greeks and that they are true Romans. Also, 'Byzantines' didn't exist. That term was coined much after Roman empire finally fell in 1453. Ok, Achaea and Trebizond fell a few decades later, but we are really talking about remnants there. The fall of Constantine's new capital is the point when it fell. Or was it? Was maybe the defeat of Greek Megali Idea, their effort to restore the Roman empire in 1922 the point when the Roman empire ceased to exist completely since no one had any rightful and active claim to the Roman tradition?
Amazon doesnt pay tax because it reinvests that profit into operations. The money that would go into federal and corporate tax instead goes to research and development (22.6B more than any other American company.) They invest in property, plants, and equipment for tax credits. (NYC could have enjoyed that) (Around 60B to-date) They also give employee stock compensation instead of cash bonuses. Some would call this "crony capitalism." But tax deductions, tax credits, and other incentives act as an important driver for organizations to then stimulate economic activity, job creation, and innovation.
@@Buggabones "But tax deductions, tax credits, and other incentives act as an important driver for organizations to then stimulate economic activity, job creation, and innovation." Ah yes, this is why amazon employees are among the best payed and most economically stable workers. /s
@@madman19931612 Depends which amazon employees. Entry level warehouse jobs with zero education and zero skills req start you off with 15$/h.. One step up become a Delivery driver. They make 60-70k a year. Thats 20-25% above that national average. Not sure what workers you are referring too. If it was such a bad job they wouldnt have such a huge work force..
@@Buggabones Investment is one thing. However, we are talking about profit after investments, and they still barely pay any. There are plenty of ways to dodge taxes, the most known and "brunt" way are of course tax havens but there are many. Setting up a secondary corporation in a tax haven that legally holds patents that the main company has to pay outrageously high costs for, in order to eat up all profits, is one way to shift profits away (though many like these are closed down, many more spring up). In Europe the "Double Irish arrangement " was for quite a while a "trick" for US Companies to avoid 1 trillion in taxiation in total.
This. The real question is how a feudal lord with maybe three literate and two numerate guys in his entire fief managed to assess the right amount of tax to be levied without either making the taxes too harsh nor too easy to dodge.
Yep. The ERE is an anomaly, not the norm. It basically was an ancient, highly wealthy and centralised state stuck in the medieval period. In terms of administration and taxation, it resembles more a modern nation than a medieval realm.
@@zippyparakeet1074 In mentioning how anomalous the medieval Romans were, I would add that feudal Europe as a whole was (varyingly) anomalous to the rest of the world. Centralized administration, though of course not on the same scale as the Byzantines everywhere, hadn’t quite died with the end of antiquity.
I'd recommend Life in a Medieval Village for a bit of a peek into how taxes worked on a local level in rural medieval England (I'm well aware that the phrase "rural medieval England" is redundant.) If I remember correctly, in less-developed regions taxes were mostly paid in goods and services, with hard coinage arising in the late middle ages as trade and markets expanded. Local lords in England would provide mostly foodstuffs and labor to their superiors, too. Ancient Rome had an interesting system in which they'd auction the right to tax a province itself to bureaucrats, and whoever bid the most had to collect their bid in taxes from the region.
The beginning makes me laugh "either you get a bill at the end of the month or it comes out your paycheck before you even see it" yep sounds about right 😂
Its the second Zenith. The Byzantines, unlike many other civilizations had many good comebacks, those territories at 0:31 were made without foreign help/intervention, ublike the ottomans, who the western anti-russians powers were the breath device of the sick of Europe. The Byzantine could be personified by a guy who gets a cold for like 2 days and after is training at the gym with its big muscles
what happened to david archeologist? why didn't he sponsor this video? what's wrong with the world?!? EDIT - Zoomy pointed out in the comments to this comment that he was indeed "namedropped". Meaning that the world is back to normal and we can sleep safely tonight.
The USA: “Here, 30 documents you have to sit and read through. We won’t directly mention what you need to pay, so you’ll have to guess. But if you guess wrong we’ll send you to ja-a-il!” Sweden: “Here, one piece of paper. The amount you need to pay is right there, go into the app and send us the money.”
depending on the region and times, the taxes can vary. during the time of confucius, the people were taxed at about 10-20%. a burden that forced people to live in the mountains that had man-eating tigers. and he said "taxes are worse than tigers". by Qin, the taxes were 2/3 of all farm produce. after Qin fell, early Han's tax was 1/30 of the produce. Tang, Song, Yuan roughly 7% equivalent of income. Ming, 4% Qing, 7% currently, it's 15% sales, various amounts in tariffs, and about 20-25% of employment income.
Tfw History Matters gets salty about his taxes and dedicates a video to it in hopes of angering the lot of us into revolution...I'm in, when do we start?
Sometime next may, it's too late to organise for this year but it's best to hit them right before the new year's taxes are collected when their reserves are at the lowest
That's a pretty straightforward way of collecting taxes. It's not very Byzantine at all. Jokes aside, any plans to do a video on how less centralized states managed to collect taxes?
One of the main reasons I became a farmer is that I get to claim back a lot of tax. Cause who would want to pay tax to the British Government and by extension the European Union?
@@MuchWhittering Some of the tax goes towards good. But then again about 40% of tax goes towards Welfare in the UK. And the education system is horrible now. The NHS is terrible. I would rather have the American Healthcare system and pay for good treatment and not wait for like 8 hours to get seen. In fact the average person spends less on healthcare in America than they do in the UK. When you consider how much of tax goes to healthcare.
Taxes are a nessecary evil. Always will be. Nobody like giving money for something they get no direct benefit from, but without them we would have no schools, emergency services, public parks, waste collection, road maintainance, public street lights or even an army to defend ourselves. It sucks, but we all use this stuff, even if just a little. Some things never change.
By the way, the Ottoman Empire adopted the Byzantine tax system to a very large extent. My people (the Bulgarians) were subjects of these both empires and the similarities are obvious.
These days, Corrupt Politicians pass laws to exempt themselves from taxes, while giving themselves raises. All paid for by the people who actually WORK!
In the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, each province and township had a Governor appointed by the King. These Governors had three types of taxes to collect: land tax, local goods tax, and military tax. The land tax was based on the amount of farmland owned, while the local goods tax was primarily paid in rice, though coins were also accepted. Military tax could be paid through conscription or a fine. Governors often abused their power and levied excessive taxes, so the king sent secret police to investigate. These police were often killed. (survival rate of one mission was about 30%. Secret police got no salary and got no funding) Nobles, slaves, prostitutes, and Chinese minorities were exempt from paying taxes. One noticeable thing is that taxes were transported by water due to Korea's lack of proper roads. This was deemed more practical and cost-effective by the central government, as building and maintaining roads in the mountainous regions of Korea would have been too expensive due to the high cost of labor and the presence of tigers in the mountains.
Attie Pollard while I do follow British politics some, it seems I don’t follow British politics enough to understand your comment. Would you mind explaining it to me?
Imagine if in the modern world you had the ability to choose how you pay your taxes, be it in money, valued goods or unpaid labour. Governments of the world would very quickly find themselves with immense cash deficits.
@@MuchWhittering Or here’s a thought......just don’t name your video “how were medieval taxes collected” if you’re gonna focus on the Empire that’s 1. Not the region people think of when you say medieval and who 2. Had a tax system unlike most of Europe or the world for that matter. And depending on the year of the Byzantine Empire you’re talking about it’s not even medieval but Late Antiquity.
This video could be better if it also went over taxation in the Holy Roman Empire. It could use a 'tale of two empires' format to compare the different medieval 'Roman Empires' and their different levels of centralization. Its pretty well-known that the Holy Roman Empire was more of a confederated system with many tiny states, and it would be interesting seeing how their tax system measured up to that of a centralized state like in Constantinople.
The lands of the Byzantine Empire were the most productive lands in the entire medieval Europe and the Near East, not because they were exceptionally fertile- in fact, Anatolia and the Balkans are very hilly but rather, because of their advanced taxation system and well oiled bureaucracy that they inherited from their ancient Roman past. A testament to that is their currency- the Nomisma aka the Solidus- which was introduced by Constantine the Great in the 4th century and it remained the same value i.e suffered from no inflation until at least the 12th century. That's 800 years of economic stability. The farmland was owned by the farmer instead of large estate owning nobility and the government guaranteed them a lot of rights thus ensuring that the farmers had disposable income which allowed them to spend on goods (proto consumerism) and allowed them to buy better equipment to boost farmland productivity. The Emperors also encouraged the production of cash crops such as olives, fruits and animal husbandry to ensure a diversified income and state export. The government also prudently maintained the infrastructure they had inherited from their past so, while being incapable of creating new infrastructure, they really didn't even have the need to because their ancestors had made so much of it and all they needed to do was maintain it. They maintained the old aqueducts, canals, dams and ensured the old Roman roads remained in good condition for smooth movement of silk road caravans and Byzantine troops. Their administration and bureaucracy resemble more of a modern nation state than a typical medieval kingdom meanwhile the HRE is the quintessential medieval state. The rights to taxation were sold by the king to the highest bidder and that bidder, upon acquiring them, made sure to fleece the peasantry to he can make the money he spent to get the rights to the estate. It was horrible and stifled productivity while keeping the realm decentralized. This is why it's kinda true that the HRE was neither Roman nor an Empire. As for Holy, well, nothing is holy. Meanwhile the Eastern Romans did their best to continue prudent Roman policies and preserve Roman infrastructure and systems.
Hey history matters, at 0:24 it's the map of Europe in which year? I used to thought it's year 1200 cause England have Normandy and Brittney under control but Byzantine by then lost southern Italy, which still shows in ur map, can you help?
Byzantine became a term synonymous with overcomplication because the Byzantine Empire's system descended from its ancient Roman past and was highly advanced. The illiterate barbarians of Western Europe found it too complex to understand and so the word became synonymous with complication. Source: I made it up.
Depends if you are talking state or federal government. The federal government used to be tiny, and was paid mostly with tariffs. States and cities were more property and sales taxes.
Basically the same, a wealth tax rather than earning, there was a period in England where the number of windows affected your level of tax which is why lots of very old buildings in England have bricked up windows
@@danielv4180 that's interesting and rather peculiar. I'd still love a more in depth video on the matter, especially if there are weird stipulations like the one you mentioned. Also, I would be interested to see how collection was handled in less centralized areas that didn't have as prominent a bureaucracy as the Byzantines.
100% some of those lords got on the good side of collectors and gave them women, land and other perks so that they would report less value for their land.
Imagine how different the world would be if we could all allocate where our taxes got spent. We'd find out REAL quick just how "popular" vote-buying government projects and policies were...
fun fact, when an eastern roman emperor died, the Varangian guard (bodyguards of the emperor composed of Norsemen and Englishmen) were allowed to loot the emperors personal treasury and carry off as much as they wanted.
People: "You're the government, give us things!" Government: "Okay." People: "Hey, stop taking our money to pay for the things we want you to give us!" Government: "Okay." People: "You're the government, give us things!" Government: _"Do you honestly think you're fucking funny?"_
@@Incubator859 no we are not goods will be market base and rival companies also put their goods out on the market to undercut high price goods. Also I'm willing to have a debate about what to tax on G&S Tax. No one should be tax on what they make on income or inheritance.
@@attiepollard7847 Raising taxes on goods means you just raise the prices on goods. VAT is just one example of this and companies did raise prices to compensate for the increase in value added tax. Try living in the real world instead of projecting your lolbertarian fantasies into reality, then come back to me.
Emperor Tiberius famously said when the tax gatherers brought him more than he had asked for; "I want my sheep sheared, not butchered!"
Which Tiberius
@@j.p.sumando56 *do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down*
@@stickman8459 lol
@@mikehawk2003 The 2nd Roman Emperor
@@j.p.sumando56 did he get his vengeance in this life or after?
"Peasants had some protections, as you couldn't tax them too much, or revolts would erupt."
*France enters the classroom late*
France: Did I miss anything important?
Boston Tea Party
Sorry mate I'm stealing that
Great Britain: No, I don't thinks so.
Well how else would they keep fighting long drawn out 18th century wars that generally didn't go anywhere and ended on draws where minor concessions would be made?
@@nick0875 just like today
"One thing was consistent, nobody liked paying them." History repeats itself!
Except for those guys on Sweden
The only certanties in life are death and taxes, as they say.
Still true to this day...
@@merrittanimation7721 not for an entrepreneur in Luxembourg.
And that the nobility get privileges (loopholes) to reduce their tax bill.
Wait so they’re not collected by huge men with clubs who will beat over the head of you don’t pay them?
Mount and blade reference???
The black knight from the Flash games!
Damn there goes my weekend
@Mr.Denton ah shit is it harvesting season already?
@Mr.Denton I am not afraid of you. I will fight.
You have 6 troops fit for battle against their 42.
I feel this was made cuz history matters got mad at his tax price
You’d feel the same if you lived in England
Cries in German
_Feeling pity for Belgium because they have to give more than 50% to the state_
@@quotenbalkaner7066 German taxes aren't that High If you don't make much Money.
@@omayaki5264 yes however every German must pay public health and pension insurance and even if you earn less than 1k per month you still get taxed by 20%. What are you gonna afford with 800€? The cheapest rent you can get is in problem districts with social housing around 400- 500€ . Then you have to pay groceries and due to euro inflation you pay 1,40€ for one 500gramm Butter ( 15 years before you would only pay 20-40¢). So in case you buy low end food you get onto 35€ a week which makes it 140€ a month for Groceries. Plus Water Bill, Electric Bill, Internet, Transportation and you basically have up 90% for basic needs. now imagine feeding a whole family with 1k. And then people are asking why do we get so less children.
@@quotenbalkaner7066 I agree that there is to few social housing and that the wages are too low. But cutting health insurance tax wouldn't really help. Because if you would get sick in the Case you yust mentioned you can simply declare bankruptcy. Imagine paying the hospital bill for your child...
“One thing was consistent, nobody liked paying them,”
Some things never change
I've heard multiple people, mostly those who lean left politically, say they are happy to pay their taxes. So things have in fact changed, somewhat.
@@seneca983 I guess the difference is that now the state actually gives to the people instead of just heavy taxation for destructive wars.
@Justinian the Great Hahaha maybe in the US but not here in Europe. They would be stupid to do so since the speed limit is 100 km/h right now! But seriously keep thinking that taxes are theft while you drive to work on well maintained roads and your trash is taken care off while you complain on the internet. Not paying taxes makes you somewhat of a third world citizen.
@@julianratering8500 Hahaha maybe that is why people in the US are saying taxation is theft because they are not spending it on the people but keeping it for themselves. People are now talking in the US about defunding, abolishing the police. Good luck collecting taxes without some kind of force.
yeah, we've got leftie bootlickers who love being wallet-r*ped by the long cock of the state
"Give us, like, half of what you've earned this year"
Oof, that's too real.
What country do you live in were 50% is taxed?
Step 1: Earning a quite nice wage.
Step 2: Getting Taxed 50%
Step 3: Paying 50% of your net income for the rent and 25% for Food, Clothing Hygiene etc
Step 4: ???????
Step 5: actually no Profit because you have to pay your Student loan debt up.
@@ulyssessphoenix2745 Belgium has a 50% tax rate
@@quotenbalkaner7066 step 5: fake your death
Step 6:move to tax havens
Keaos0 no it isn’t you dumbass
An interesting fact I remember reading is that medieval kings often sold the right to collect taxes rather than directly collecting them. So basically a tax collector would be a sort of entrepeneur who would hunt you down to recover what he’d already paid the king and then some. This scheme led to a lot of abuse and made tax collectors especially detested and the source of revolts
that does not seem very wise for kings to do. What was the reason for this?? pure profit?
@@rav9066 Several reasons for it, number one being that governments as we think of them today didn’t exist. In the middle ages complex state bureaucracies (such as tax collecting) were in their infancy, so this sort of “outsourcing” solutions were fairly common. Also, medieval kings were often perpetually short on cash, particularly to raise armies to go to war; so they relied a lot on credit and other financing means. The selling of tax collecting rights meant that they had cash now instead of having to wait months and months for it.
Privatisation of tax collection?
@@charu2059 in the Middle Ages everything was "privatised", or rather private, since centralised states with all-consuming public bureacracies didn't become a thing until the early 20th century
Bureaucrats employed directly by the government would have probably been pretty greedy anyways. The society they lived in was not advanced and organized enough to keep track of all those taxes properly.
Next question: How often did medieval tax collectors find themselves tragically, accidentally, brutally stabbed to death?
...asking for a friend
Same rate tax evasion happen nowadays hhahaha.
Short answer is not very often because if you did, you'd be guaranteed to get a visit from a gang of government-paid armed thugs showing up not long after
Did they go on to collect taxes without any guards around them?
Well it definitely happened. An extreme example at the end of the Medieval period would be the Earl of Northumberland who was murdered in a riot in York over a tax increase which was ordered by Henry VII to finance a quick war with France
Thank you for specifying the region you’re focusing on rather than pretending it applies to all of medieval Europe.
Tbf, the rest of Europe didn't had an efficient way of taxation as the one used by the romans or the muslim kingdoms.
@@Marshal_Rock Tbf that's because Robin Hood kept stealing it back
@@Pawn2e4 Made me laugh, thanks
Fun fact: muslims used roman tax codes@@Marshal_Rock
As a side note, at least in Western Europe, it was common practice to record taxes using tallysticks. Essentially they would carve notches into a stick to tally up the money involved and the stick would be split in half, with each party taking one half. That way if there was any dispute later on the halved stick could be produced as a kind of receipt, once the two halves were shown to fit together perfectly then the name written onto the sticks and the notches carved into the stick could then be used to prove what money had been paid, and by who.
"Nobody liked paying taxes"
Richard II: "Y'all hear sum?"
@Edward Tay Can't pay taxes if the government already owns everything.
It’s Richard III
No, he’s right. Richard II faced a major peasant’s revolt due to taxation and other grievances
@Edward Tay Are you fucking high? Speaking as someone from Romania, that was a communist country till 1989, taxes 100% did exist, the only difference was that there was very little to tax as the government gave all the salaries (and as such took taxes out of your paycheck directly) and private property was nigh on non existent. Also there were social security retirement taxes that actually didn't pay for your retirement instead operating like a Ponzi scheme, with the current investments being used to pay current retired people, something that did no under any circumstances completely backfire when the communists fucked up our demographics too.
George Washington be like
Do more videos on Byzantine history!!!! They’re criminally understudied when compared to classical Rome and need to have more entertaining and easily digestible videos like these about them.
I swear, the place where it is taught the most is Greece.
@@azh698 Well Greece IS their direct successor, so it makes sense
@@azh698 Naturally, it is also studied quite a lot in Bulgaria, for obvious reasons *cue one of the most underrated and long lasting rivalries in human history not many people talk about*.
@@dragonsword2253
The question is. How much are they studied in Turkey ?
Eastern Roman Empire*
Britain: * Places New Tax *
1776 Colonists: *COWABUNGA IT IS.*
Don’t forget the lack of representation for the colonies
*America screams in the background*
lol
Then the colonists tax their own poor people.
Britain is actually bankrupted by war in the colonies protecting the British colonies from the French. So they taxed the colonies
While it had Eastern on the front, their tax collection was still all too Roman.
To be fair most of what medieval Europe way of ruling and bureaucracy was mostly copied by the Romans. They were ahead of their time.
maybe its because they are the Roman Empire
@@garabic8688 technically yes but are they really comparable from what the Romans were to the Byzantines?
@@joshuaarroyo7235 Is any society comparable to what it was centuries ago? By that standard, no country today should share a name with any from the past. The Eastern Roman Empire was what was left of the Roman Empire, period.
Well, they didn't have eastern in front, that's how the historians call it to distinguish it from the western part. It called itself Roman and no one had any doubt at that time that they were Romans. Except for Carolingians, they thought they were just Greeks and that they are true Romans. Also, 'Byzantines' didn't exist. That term was coined much after Roman empire finally fell in 1453. Ok, Achaea and Trebizond fell a few decades later, but we are really talking about remnants there. The fall of Constantine's new capital is the point when it fell. Or was it? Was maybe the defeat of Greek Megali Idea, their effort to restore the Roman empire in 1922 the point when the Roman empire ceased to exist completely since no one had any rightful and active claim to the Roman tradition?
Amazon: lol you guys are paying taxes?
State and local taxes be like:
We are coming in more ways than one
Amazon doesnt pay tax because it reinvests that profit into operations. The money that would go into federal and corporate tax instead goes to research and development (22.6B more than any other American company.)
They invest in property, plants, and equipment for tax credits. (NYC could have enjoyed that) (Around 60B to-date)
They also give employee stock compensation instead of cash bonuses.
Some would call this "crony capitalism." But tax deductions, tax credits, and other incentives act as an important driver for organizations to then stimulate economic activity, job creation, and innovation.
@@Buggabones "But tax deductions, tax credits, and other incentives act as an important driver for organizations to then stimulate economic activity, job creation, and innovation."
Ah yes, this is why amazon employees are among the best payed and most economically stable workers. /s
@@madman19931612 Depends which amazon employees. Entry level warehouse jobs with zero education and zero skills req start you off with 15$/h.. One step up become a Delivery driver. They make 60-70k a year. Thats 20-25% above that national average. Not sure what workers you are referring too. If it was such a bad job they wouldnt have such a huge work force..
@@Buggabones Investment is one thing. However, we are talking about profit after investments, and they still barely pay any. There are plenty of ways to dodge taxes, the most known and "brunt" way are of course tax havens but there are many. Setting up a secondary corporation in a tax haven that legally holds patents that the main company has to pay outrageously high costs for, in order to eat up all profits, is one way to shift profits away (though many like these are closed down, many more spring up). In Europe the "Double Irish arrangement
" was for quite a while a "trick" for US Companies to avoid 1 trillion in taxiation in total.
The ERE was way more centralized we need a "western medieval country version"
This. The real question is how a feudal lord with maybe three literate and two numerate guys in his entire fief managed to assess the right amount of tax to be levied without either making the taxes too harsh nor too easy to dodge.
Yep. The ERE is an anomaly, not the norm. It basically was an ancient, highly wealthy and centralised state stuck in the medieval period. In terms of administration and taxation, it resembles more a modern nation than a medieval realm.
@@anderskorsback4104bc it was the roman empire
@@zippyparakeet1074 In mentioning how anomalous the medieval Romans were, I would add that feudal Europe as a whole was (varyingly) anomalous to the rest of the world. Centralized administration, though of course not on the same scale as the Byzantines everywhere, hadn’t quite died with the end of antiquity.
I'd recommend Life in a Medieval Village for a bit of a peek into how taxes worked on a local level in rural medieval England (I'm well aware that the phrase "rural medieval England" is redundant.) If I remember correctly, in less-developed regions taxes were mostly paid in goods and services, with hard coinage arising in the late middle ages as trade and markets expanded. Local lords in England would provide mostly foodstuffs and labor to their superiors, too.
Ancient Rome had an interesting system in which they'd auction the right to tax a province itself to bureaucrats, and whoever bid the most had to collect their bid in taxes from the region.
I’m a simple man, I see the byzantine empire in the thumbnail, I click.
Based
I see you too are a man of culture
same
ditto
Why do Europeans like Rome Empire too much
Prince John: Taxes! Taxes! Beautiful, lovely taxes!
Hi
what movie? eeeeeee
@@bv5998 Thx m8 i found it
@@bv5998 kk
Prince John: "Rrrrrrrrrrrob the poor to feed the rich, am I right?"
"You get a bill at the end of the year"
Cries in American Tax Code.
The beginning makes me laugh "either you get a bill at the end of the month or it comes out your paycheck before you even see it" yep sounds about right 😂
2:19 weezer
"These things be cold and not warm. They should not be eaten in such a fashion!"
"But there be tax if we warm them, sir!"
I know! I set the taxes!
0:31 that Roman Empire is beautiful....
I don't know why but the map of Rome in 1025 is so freaking satisfying....
I wish it kept those borders forever
@@garabic8688 the best one for me is to see Rome around the Mediterranean that is ult
It should also include southern Crimea.
@@georgechristman6920 Crimea was a client state, not ipso facto of the empire
Its the second Zenith. The Byzantines, unlike many other civilizations had many good comebacks, those territories at 0:31 were made without foreign help/intervention, ublike the ottomans, who the western anti-russians powers were the breath device of the sick of Europe. The Byzantine could be personified by a guy who gets a cold for like 2 days and after is training at the gym with its big muscles
In oversimplified history that would be "Hmmm, theres gonna be a tax for that too"
what happened to david archeologist? why didn't he sponsor this video? what's wrong with the world?!?
EDIT - Zoomy pointed out in the comments to this comment that he was indeed "namedropped". Meaning that the world is back to normal and we can sleep safely tonight.
Carlitos Aguacate someone hasn’t paid his taxes (but he thanked him)
No, David Archaeologist was namedropped, right after James Bizzenet.
@@Zoomy yes, he was. I'll edit my comment
@@carlitosaguacate861 Also, just want to say I'm glad I'm not the only one that hangs around at the credits to check that David's doing alright.
I wanna know what happened to Ozarka Flash
This video came out EXACTLY when I needed it! I went to look up how medieval taxes worked and BOOM! In my inbox is this video. I am amazed!
This channel's animations are always hilarious😂😂
I'm quite impressed you managed to make a video on medieval taxation without using the words "feudal" or "feudalism".
Eastern Roman Empire didn't have "feudalism" as western europe had during middle ages, the state was much more centralised.
Fun Fact: from 1002 to 1028, the Byzantines also Forced The Wealthly Aristocrats to pay for their Peasant's Shortfalls in their taxes
Yeah, thanks to Emperor Basil. If only he was succeeded by Emperors who were just as strong as him.
@@zippyparakeet1074 if only....
Thanks for making these videos. Your content is very fun to watch
Love seeing videos on the Medieval Romans!
Same here.
The USA: “Here, 30 documents you have to sit and read through. We won’t directly mention what you need to pay, so you’ll have to guess. But if you guess wrong we’ll send you to ja-a-il!”
Sweden: “Here, one piece of paper. The amount you need to pay is right there, go into the app and send us the money.”
depending on the region and times, the taxes can vary.
during the time of confucius, the people were taxed at about 10-20%. a burden that forced people to live in the mountains that had man-eating tigers.
and he said "taxes are worse than tigers".
by Qin, the taxes were 2/3 of all farm produce.
after Qin fell, early Han's tax was 1/30 of the produce.
Tang, Song, Yuan roughly 7% equivalent of income.
Ming, 4%
Qing, 7%
currently, it's 15% sales, various amounts in tariffs, and about 20-25% of employment income.
I do think it's worth noting the relative value one gets out of taxes today than they did back then, though, lol.
To be fair China had a series of dynasties which complicated what the state was financing another war or another conquest.
I’ve been watching his videos for years now, why am I just now subbing?
Citizen: "I can't pay any more taxes! I'm dead!"
Bureaucracy: "Wanna bet?"
Tax Collector: you watch this video? there's a Tax for that.
2:53 HE SAID THE THING
🥵🥵🥵
I like how you used Basil II and the map of the empire during his reign. Definitely the best byzantine emperor
Tfw History Matters gets salty about his taxes and dedicates a video to it in hopes of angering the lot of us into revolution...I'm in, when do we start?
Sometime next may, it's too late to organise for this year but it's best to hit them right before the new year's taxes are collected when their reserves are at the lowest
bring back longer videos... i want to know more details, and your quality is the best
That Byzantine Empire 1025 AD map 😍
Fun fact: Stamp duty in England was instituted to pay for one of the wars against France. Still paying it.
"The Emperor will get his rent when you fix this DAMNED DOOR!"
"This is Byzantine Empire, not rent-free Empire!"
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!!!
The universe has two absolutes, death and taxes.
LagiNaLangAko23 Same thing as death basically lol.
88 dislikes are from people who can’t afford to pay their tax
Al-Yasa Lunat 7 now
I know this is stale but...
Yoshi: *sweats*
If it's only 1 dislike, it's not their. Just His/her.
his*
None of us can.
Could you do one on how toilets and waste were cleaned back then
That's a pretty straightforward way of collecting taxes. It's not very Byzantine at all.
Jokes aside, any plans to do a video on how less centralized states managed to collect taxes?
One of the main reasons I became a farmer is that I get to claim back a lot of tax. Cause who would want to pay tax to the British Government and by extension the European Union?
@TheWeeaboo/videos Nah. I was very tired when I wrote that comment. When tired I make mistakes. Nothing to do with speaking English.
I assume then you never use any of the following:
The police
Hospitals
The fire brigade
Waste management
Roads
Street lights
Schools
@@MuchWhittering Some of the tax goes towards good. But then again about 40% of tax goes towards Welfare in the UK. And the education system is horrible now. The NHS is terrible. I would rather have the American Healthcare system and pay for good treatment and not wait for like 8 hours to get seen. In fact the average person spends less on healthcare in America than they do in the UK. When you consider how much of tax goes to healthcare.
"No taxation without representation"
"Represen what?"
It's simple: Don't pay? Say goodbye today.
James Bissonette always paid his taxes in full. Good man that James
Taxes are a nessecary evil. Always will be. Nobody like giving money for something they get no direct benefit from, but without them we would have no schools, emergency services, public parks, waste collection, road maintainance, public street lights or even an army to defend ourselves.
It sucks, but we all use this stuff, even if just a little. Some things never change.
People wouldn't mind taxes if they were used wisely and in good ways
@@Eric6761 in most cases, they generally are, yea politicians scrape a bit off the top, and yea thats a dlck move, but they also do a lot of good.
@@Whoami691 Not really
@@Eric6761 not in America, but the rest of the west is doing great by comparison.
"Well, to everyone's surprise, the people who bore the brunt of taxation were the peasantry." Yup, shocker there
It's good to see nothing has changed in the sense of "no one wants to pay them"
Wow nobody came down with an acute case of "The Deads" in this video.
"Let me tell you how it will be. That's one for you, 19 for me." - George Harrison
In the days of 98% tax rates, he was actually understating it!
By the way, the Ottoman Empire adopted the Byzantine tax system to a very large extent. My people (the Bulgarians) were subjects of these both empires and the similarities are obvious.
Would be interesting to hear about medieval swedish finance such as shares of stock and property rights in addition to taxes
Royalty and Religion: What tax?
Some things never change.
2:42 consistent to this day btw
I’m not even an adult currently and I’m dreading that I’m going to be paying them one day
Love the pace! Not too fast! Can you do the same vid for medieval empires in Far East Asia?
Bonus points for using Rome as an example!
These days, Corrupt Politicians pass laws to exempt themselves from taxes, while giving themselves raises.
All paid for by the people who actually WORK!
"nobody like paying it"
everybody felt that
In the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, each province and township had a Governor appointed by the King. These Governors had three types of taxes to collect: land tax, local goods tax, and military tax.
The land tax was based on the amount of farmland owned, while the local goods tax was primarily paid in rice, though coins were also accepted. Military tax could be paid through conscription or a fine.
Governors often abused their power and levied excessive taxes, so the king sent secret police to investigate. These police were often killed. (survival rate of one mission was about 30%. Secret police got no salary and got no funding)
Nobles, slaves, prostitutes, and Chinese minorities were exempt from paying taxes.
One noticeable thing is that taxes were transported by water due to Korea's lack of proper roads. This was deemed more practical and cost-effective by the central government, as building and maintaining roads in the mountainous regions of Korea would have been too expensive due to the high cost of labor and the presence of tigers in the mountains.
If Yoshi was sent back in time he could commit tax fraud
A video about medieval taxes makes perfect sense considering how much people have always loved paying taxes
Who the hell loves paying taxes? Nooooo one
Attie Pollard that’s why I pay my taxes in the form of sarcastic TH-cam comments
@@alexray230 Jeremy corbyn, Warren & Sanders: THATS NOT GOOD ENOUGH lol
Attie Pollard while I do follow British politics some, it seems I don’t follow British politics enough to understand your comment. Would you mind explaining it to me?
@@alexray230 just a joke to say that they want more then sarcasm or money
If you were the Dragonborn, it was taken out of an inheritance of a friend that you may or may not have killed. Other than that, you pay nothing.
How ironic that in this modern era, we no longer have those protections anymore, AND the modern equivalent of nobility STILL barely pay taxes!
Imagine if in the modern world you had the ability to choose how you pay your taxes, be it in money, valued goods or unpaid labour.
Governments of the world would very quickly find themselves with immense cash deficits.
I don't think so, you'd still have to pay the same value so you'd have to choose between your house or car or a lifetime of unpaid labour
Wow! That really isn't a surprise that even back then people hated paying their taxes.
More like
“How were Byzantine Taxes Collected”
came here for this
This may surprise you, but different countries do things differently, and 3 minutes isn't long enough to explain all of them.
@@MuchWhittering Or here’s a thought......just don’t name your video “how were medieval taxes collected” if you’re gonna focus on the Empire that’s 1. Not the region people think of when you say medieval and who 2. Had a tax system unlike most of Europe or the world for that matter.
And depending on the year of the Byzantine Empire you’re talking about it’s not even medieval but Late Antiquity.
You mean Roman taxes
@@tylerellis9097 completely agree. Byzantine Empire wasn't even a feudal society in the common sense.
I love this channel it might be even better than oversimplified
You know you are a nerd when you can recognize a cataphract in this art style.
My dog got cataphracts. Poor old guy couldn't see a thing.
@@CaptainAmaziiingi think you got them too
Me: *farming*
Tax Collector: ITS -DAX- TAX!
This video could be better if it also went over taxation in the Holy Roman Empire. It could use a 'tale of two empires' format to compare the different medieval 'Roman Empires' and their different levels of centralization. Its pretty well-known that the Holy Roman Empire was more of a confederated system with many tiny states, and it would be interesting seeing how their tax system measured up to that of a centralized state like in Constantinople.
The lands of the Byzantine Empire were the most productive lands in the entire medieval Europe and the Near East, not because they were exceptionally fertile- in fact, Anatolia and the Balkans are very hilly but rather, because of their advanced taxation system and well oiled bureaucracy that they inherited from their ancient Roman past. A testament to that is their currency- the Nomisma aka the Solidus- which was introduced by Constantine the Great in the 4th century and it remained the same value i.e suffered from no inflation until at least the 12th century. That's 800 years of economic stability.
The farmland was owned by the farmer instead of large estate owning nobility and the government guaranteed them a lot of rights thus ensuring that the farmers had disposable income which allowed them to spend on goods (proto consumerism) and allowed them to buy better equipment to boost farmland productivity.
The Emperors also encouraged the production of cash crops such as olives, fruits and animal husbandry to ensure a diversified income and state export.
The government also prudently maintained the infrastructure they had inherited from their past so, while being incapable of creating new infrastructure, they really didn't even have the need to because their ancestors had made so much of it and all they needed to do was maintain it. They maintained the old aqueducts, canals, dams and ensured the old Roman roads remained in good condition for smooth movement of silk road caravans and Byzantine troops.
Their administration and bureaucracy resemble more of a modern nation state than a typical medieval kingdom meanwhile the HRE is the quintessential medieval state. The rights to taxation were sold by the king to the highest bidder and that bidder, upon acquiring them, made sure to fleece the peasantry to he can make the money he spent to get the rights to the estate. It was horrible and stifled productivity while keeping the realm decentralized.
This is why it's kinda true that the HRE was neither Roman nor an Empire. As for Holy, well, nothing is holy. Meanwhile the Eastern Romans did their best to continue prudent Roman policies and preserve Roman infrastructure and systems.
But the one is the roman empire and the other isn't
Hey history matters, at 0:24 it's the map of Europe in which year? I used to thought it's year 1200 cause England have Normandy and Brittney under control but Byzantine by then lost southern Italy, which still shows in ur map, can you help?
Maybe 1100
Man this was a surprisingly straight forward system and not Byzantine at all.
I think if you really look at it though, it was a Byzantine system.
Byzantine became a term synonymous with overcomplication because the Byzantine Empire's system descended from its ancient Roman past and was highly advanced. The illiterate barbarians of Western Europe found it too complex to understand and so the word became synonymous with complication.
Source: I made it up.
I got a Turbotax ad before this 😳
"wait taxation is basically theft?"
"Always has been"
I assume then you never use any of the following:
The police
Hospitals
The fire brigade
Waste management
Roads
Street lights
Schools
@@MuchWhittering but muuuhh ROOOOAAADDDSSS!
So no big men walking around Calradia going "Your money or or your life!" in a sluggish voice
How were taxes paid in the U.S. before income taxes as we know it now? That would be a good episode.
Depends if you are talking state or federal government. The federal government used to be tiny, and was paid mostly with tariffs. States and cities were more property and sales taxes.
I feel like nobody would hate to pay taxes if most goverments would actually use it properly. That and the extrem unequality between rich and poor.
I'd be curious to see how taxes were collected in less imperial and more feudal nations of the time, such as France and England.
Basically the same, a wealth tax rather than earning, there was a period in England where the number of windows affected your level of tax which is why lots of very old buildings in England have bricked up windows
@@danielv4180 that's interesting and rather peculiar. I'd still love a more in depth video on the matter, especially if there are weird stipulations like the one you mentioned. Also, I would be interested to see how collection was handled in less centralized areas that didn't have as prominent a bureaucracy as the Byzantines.
100% some of those lords got on the good side of collectors and gave them women, land and other perks so that they would report less value for their land.
0:10, I think they are in Russia, just thought I’d point that out for no reason
Nah my guess is South Africa
@@Britishdarnlibnah I think it's south America
Rob everything and you're a bandit
Rob a little and provide protection and you're a mobster
Rob a little long enough and you're the King
Imagine how different the world would be if we could all allocate where our taxes got spent. We'd find out REAL quick just how "popular" vote-buying government projects and policies were...
fun fact, when an eastern roman emperor died, the Varangian guard (bodyguards of the emperor composed of Norsemen and Englishmen) were allowed to loot the emperors personal treasury and carry off as much as they wanted.
We demand MORE Byzantine videos! More! Magis!! περισσότερο!!!
History Matters is awesome!
So, just like today, the working poor got screwed! I get it, nothings changed.
People: "You're the government, give us things!"
Government: "Okay."
People: "Hey, stop taking our money to pay for the things we want you to give us!"
Government: "Okay."
People: "You're the government, give us things!"
Government: _"Do you honestly think you're fucking funny?"_
"Pay me, Nerd."
Yep, sounds like the IRS to me.
This is why we need a national sales tax on goods and services and end the income tax.
@@attiepollard7847 You're just raising prices on goods and services if that's the case. The net effect is still the same, less purchasing power.
@@Incubator859 no we are not goods will be market base and rival companies also put their goods out on the market to undercut high price goods.
Also I'm willing to have a debate about what to tax on G&S Tax.
No one should be tax on what they make on income or inheritance.
@@attiepollard7847 Raising taxes on goods means you just raise the prices on goods. VAT is just one example of this and companies did raise prices to compensate for the increase in value added tax.
Try living in the real world instead of projecting your lolbertarian fantasies into reality, then come back to me.
@@Incubator859 then end the income tax to offset the cost on VAT.
Byzantine/eastern roman history videos are very very interesting :D
10% on income. The most fair way.
What I'd like to know is how tax collection and control of states with exclaves galore could possibly work...