When did taxation emerge

There is a saying that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. While this may make taxation sound like a strongly embedded idea in society, the historical development of taxes did begin with the rise of early states. However, taxes have been redefined and have conceptually evolved over the centuries, while they still retain their primary goal of funding government interests.

Early History

With the development of complex institutions, in particular governments ruled by kings, taxes became one of the ways such institutions thrived. While we often think of taxes as a set percentage per year that we pay, this might not have been the case in early examples of taxes. One of the earliest form of taxes was corvée, where labor by individuals for a period of time was given to the authorities to construct canals and other infrastructure. This was the case in both Mesopotamia (southern Iraq) and Egypt, where such labor would be required for periods of time from different families living with the state or even towns.

Early records from Mesopotamia, from the early 3rd millennium BCE, also indicate forms of tithes or percentages of obligation that was required from individuals. This could have been traders or normal individuals who owned revenue to institutions, such as temples, and the state. In fact, many scholars see that taxation may have been one of the primary motives for writing to more fully develop by this time in southern Mesopotamia, where written language indicate more sophisticated writing systems by 2900-2500 BCE.

In Egypt, the system may have been even more centralized, where often Pharaoh and the priestly classes held a lot of power. In this case, people and revenue could be conscripted or taxed on regular schedules. The Egyptians justified this by claiming everything belonged to Pharaoh anyway and the percentages sent to the central government in Memphis represented a percentage from the different nomes, or small provinces within Egypt. These obligations helped fuel the major building activity in the Early Dynastic period such as the Great Pyramids in Giza, which helped to reinforce Pharaoh's central authority and thus tax-based system created.

Mesopotamia in the late 3rd millennium BCE, by about 2100 BCE, created another form of taxation that revolved responsibility to different cities and also required different types and amounts of revenue depending on how linked the city was to the central government. Some cities that specialized in agricultural products would be required to sent those products to the central government, while others specializing in wood or other products could send those. These items were collected and deposited in central facilities that acted as a collection point. The system then created a large bureaucratic structure that had many dependents who relied upon taxation from the controlled cities. The state itself would use these resources in redistributing goods to enable building projects or use the goods directly for projects or payments.