#Napoléon et l’argent

[empirearchives]

Changes to the Tax Collection System in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France

My translation from Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent by Pierre Branda.

This part is specifically about the reforms made to the tax collection system. Problems with taxation had been the source of many woes, so it went through major changes.

“The [tax] work of the Consulate mainly concerned the reorganization of tax collection. Until now, this essential element was not administered directly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constituent Assembly had wanted the tax rolls for direct contributions, that is to say the ‘tax slips’, to be established by municipal administrations. Their work was complex, because each year it was necessary to draw up a list of taxpayers, determine each person’s share of tax and send them the amount of the contribution to pay. Poorly motivated (or even corrupt), the municipalities had put little care in the execution of their mission since a large part of the taxpayers had not yet received anything for their taxes of year VIII, or even of year VII or year VI. Also, with two or three years of delay in preparing the rolls, it was not surprising that tax revenues were low (nearly 400 million francs were thus left outstanding). If the sending of tax matrices left something to be desired, the collection of direct contributions was hardly better. The tax collector was also not an agent of the administration: this function was assigned to any person who agreed to collect taxes with the lowest possible commission (otherwise called ‘collecte à la moins-dite’). With such a system, there were numerous inadequacies, often due to incompetence, but also due to the prevailing spirit of fraud. However, in their defense, the profits of the collectors were most of the time too low to provide such a service; also, to compensate for their losses, they were ‘forced’ to multiply small and big cheats. In any case, in such a troubled period, letting simple individuals carry out such a delicate mission could only be dangerous for the regularity of public accounts. In short, the mode of operation of taxation that Bonaparte and Gaudin inherited was failing on all sides and threatened to sink the State.”

“One month after Gaudin’s appointment, on December 13, 1799, the Directorate of Direct Contributions was created with the mission of establishing and sending tax matrices. This administration, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, was made up of a general director, 99 departmental directors and 840 inspectors and controllers. The organization of direct contributions became both centralized and pyramidal, the opposite of the previous system, decentralized and with a confused hierarchy. The work of preparing the rolls, for so long entrusted to local authorities, passed entirely ‘in the hands of the Minister of Finance’ and in this way the taxpayer found himself in direct contact with the administration. The tax system no longer having any obstacles, the beneficial effects of such a measure did not take long to be felt. With ardor, the agents of this new administration carried out considerable work: three series of rolls, that is to say more than one hundred thousand tax slips, were established in a single year. It must be said that the ministry had not skimped on their pay (6,000 francs per year for a director, 4,000 for an inspector and 1,800 for a controller), which was undoubtedly not unrelated to such success.”

“Tax reform was slower. It was not until 1804 that all tax collectors were civil servants. The consular system gradually replaced the collectors of the departments, then of the main cities and finally of all the municipalities whose tax rolls exceeded 15,000 francs. At the end of the Consulate, the entire tax administration was thus entirely dependent on the central government. Subsequently, the one in charge of indirect contributions (taxes on tobacco, alcohol or salt) created on February 25, 1804 and called the Régie des droits réunis was built on the same pyramidal and centralized model. It was the same later for customs.”

“According to Michel Bruguière, historian of public finances, ‘Napoleon and Gaudin can be considered the builders of the French tax administration. [...] They had also developed and codified the essential principles of our tax law, so profoundly derogatory from the rules of French law, since the taxpayer has nothing to do with it, while the administration has all the powers’. Basically, after having clearly understood the true cause of the ‘financial wound’, Bonaparte wanted an effective, almost ‘despotic’ instrument to avoid experiencing the unfortunate fate of his predecessors. As a good soldier, he created a fiscal ‘army’ responsible for providing the regime with the sinews of war. It was also necessary to definitively break the link between private interests and state service in everything that concerned public revenue. The time of the farmer generals of the Ancien Régime or the ‘second-hand’ collectors of the Directory was well and truly over. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his fierce desire to centralize power in this area as in many others, undoubtedly gave his regime the means to last.”

French:

Page 208

Page 209

Page 210