The taxable estates are the estates that paid tax (lodge) 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 particular groups of people were included in the taxable estates will be discussed in this article.
The concept
An estate is a group of people whose members differ in their legal status. As a rule, it is enshrined in law. Classes are found only in pre-capitalist states. The difference between classes and classes is that it is a legal status that is inherited. A person cannot move from one to another. The state clearly monitors this through legal norms, as in maintaining the legal status, it feels safe. That is why the estate system is found only in the estate-representative monarchy in feudal states, and disintegrates when capitalism appears.
The monarch (emperor, king, sultan, etc.) is at the head of the state only because he comes from a noble family. Nothing depends on his personal qualities and skills. Therefore, the transition from one estate to another has always been perceived extremely negatively: everyone saw this as a threat to the existing system. The elite tried to maintain its position everywhere and at all times. The transition from an estate system to a class system has always been accompanied by social explosions, civil wars, revolutions.
Types of estates in Russia
The integrity of the Russian state and the authority of monarchist 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 “blacks,” the latter were called “whites.” For example, “white settlement” is a tax-free village; "Black-walled peasants" - peasants who paid tax, etc.
Transformation of Peter the Great
The very concept of "taxable estates" appears only under Peter the Great. Prior to this, everyone who was supposed to pay taxes was called "taxable." Peter the First for the first time applied the tax system in Russia, which exists today: he introduced the capitation tax. Before him, no one was rewriting the population. The elites had no idea how many people are in the state. The tax was imposed on a settlement, a village, a village, etc. Such a system was extremely inefficient and unfair. Peter equalized all rights within his estates. Now everyone had to pay the same fee, which the state would establish.
Before the reform began, an audit was carried out - a census. Documents with lists were called "audit 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", "telepuziki", "Jedi" and other nationalities are found that do not exist in the classifications.
Tax classes of Russia
The taxable classes belonged to the whole mass of rural inhabitants, philistines, and shop workers. They could be attributed to persons who missed the audit and were not included in the “audit tales”, as well as fugitives. Also equated to taxes:
- foundlings;
- people who do not remember their relationship;
- illegitimate children, despite the legal status of the mother.
Each of the classes 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 tenders", as well as pharmacists, doctors, doctors. It was impossible to separate them into a separate estate from the merchant, since the legal status was determined by birth, and not by occupation. The second guild of merchants included petty craftsmen, petty merchants, as well as "all the vile people found in hires, in black jobs and the like." Merchants did not pay a poll tax. The state charged them for the "entrance" to the guild. This system resembles modern licensing: if you pay money, you get the right to engage in certain activities.
Sources not in vain call some merchants "vile people." A loophole in law was formed: some of them were not engaged in trade, which irritated the state. They could neither be charged per capita tax nor transferred under the laws of the feudal estate to another class.
Mutual responsibility
Society vigilantly ensured that people could not deceive the state during audit tales. An appetite filing did not at all mean that every resident was obliged to come to the fiscal authority and pay for himself. To build such a system, huge funds and a lot of time are needed. The state made it simpler: it put people on the lists of “revision tales”, charged the main tax from the taxable classes depending on the number of the taxed 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 modern utility bills for common-house meters in apartment buildings: the total debt is divided into all residents.
Taxable estates of the 19th century: estate crisis
The estate system becomes obsolete during the development of capitalism. A striking 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 rights, while the semi-poor nobles had legal privileges before them. In Russia, the crisis is most acute from the middle of the XIX to the beginning of the XX centuries. However, until 1918, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was in force in the country, which retains the estate system.
On May 15, 1883, Emperor Alexander the Third abolishes the manifesto of filing. 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 juices” out of miserable subjects before the revolutions of the 20th century.