Taxable estates - estates that paid tax (submit) to the state. In our country, legal inequality lasted until the end of the 19th century. Some paid taxes, others were exempted from them. About which groups of people were included in the tax estates will be discussed in this article.
Concept
A class is a group of people whose members differ in legal status. As a rule, it is fixed by law. Estates are found only in pre-capitalist states. The difference between estates and classes is that this is a legal status that is inherited. Man cannot move from one to the other. The state clearly monitors this through legal norms, since it feels safe in maintaining a legal position. That is why the estate system is found only in the estate-representative monarchy in feudal states, and disintegrates with the emergence of capitalism.
A monarch (emperor, king, sultan, etc.) is at the head of the state only because hecomes from a noble family. Nothing depends on his personal qualities and skills. Therefore, the transition from one class to another has always been perceived extremely negatively: everyone saw this as a threat to the existing system. The elite tried to maintain their position everywhere and at all times. The transition from a class system to a class system has always been accompanied by social explosions, civil wars, and revolutions.
Types of estates in Russia
The integrity of the Russian state and the authority of the monarchical power depended on the preservation of the estate system. In general, they can be divided into two large groups: taxable estates and privileged. The former were also called "black", the latter - "white". For example, "white settlement" - a village exempt from taxes; "black-haired peasants" - peasants who paid taxes, etc.
Transformation of Peter the Great
The very concept of "taxable estates" appears only under Peter the Great. Prior to this, everyone who had to pay taxes was called "taxable". Peter the Great was the first to apply in Russia the tax system that still exists today: he introduced the poll tax. Before him, no one censused the population. The elites had no idea how many people were in the state. The tax was set on a settlement, a village, a village, etc. Such a system was extremely inefficient and unfair. Peter equalized everyone in rights within the framework of his estates. Now everyone had to pay the same tax, which would be established by the state.
Before the startreforms, an audit was carried out - a census of the population. Documents with lists were called "revision tales". The term "fairy tales" is best suited to this document, since it was not possible to verify the accuracy of the information. By the way, in our time, after the census, various “Pokemon”, “Teletubbies”, “Jedi” and other nationalities that do not exist in the classifications are found.
Taxable estates of Russia
The entire mass of rural inhabitants, philistines, shop workers belonged to the taxable estates. They could be attributed to persons who missed the revision and were not included in the "revision tales", as well as fugitives. Also equated to tax:
- foundlings;
- people who do not remember their relationship;
- illegitimate children, despite the legal status of the mother.
Each of the estates was divided into categories and groups. For example, under Peter the Great, merchants began to be divided into guilds. The first included "noble merchants who have large bargains", as well as pharmacists, healers, doctors. They could not be singled out as a separate estate from the merchant class, since the legal status was determined by birth, and not by occupation. The second guild of merchants included small craftsmen, small merchants, as well as "all vile people who are hired, in menial work and the like." The merchants did not pay the poll tax. The state took from them a fee for "entrance" to the guild. This system is reminiscent of modern licensing: you pay money - you get the right to engage in a certainactivity.
Sources don't call some merchants "mean people" for nothing. There was a loophole in the law: some of them were not engaged in trade, which irritated the state. It was impossible to collect a poll tax from them, nor to transfer them to another class according to the laws of the feudal-estate system.
Cooperate
The society vigilantly watched to ensure that people could not deceive the state during revision tales. The poll tax did not mean at all that each resident was obliged to come to the fiscal authority and pay for himself. To build such a system requires huge funds and a lot of time. The state made it easier: it put people on the lists of "revision tales", charged the main tax on the taxable estates depending on the number of the taxable population, and billed the whole society. This was called mutual responsibility. If someone decides to deceive the state, other residents paid for it. Such a system is reminiscent of the modern payment of utility bills by common house meters in apartment buildings: the total debt is divided among all residents.
The taxable estates of the 19th century: the crisis of the estate system
The estate system is becoming obsolete in the period of development of capitalism. A vivid example of the crisis was described by A. P. Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard. Former peasants and merchants had huge financial fortunes, but were limited in their rights, while semi-poor nobles had legal privileges over them. The crisis is most acute in Russiamanifested from the middle of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries. However, until 1918, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was in force in the country, which retained the estate system.
May 15, 1883, Emperor Alexander III abolishes the poll tax with a manifesto. Russia is the only European state that has exempted its citizens from personal taxes. Therefore, it was absolutely wrong to say that the "tsarist regime" squeezed "all the juice" out of the unfortunate subjects before the revolutions of the 20th century.
