Taxation In The Roman Empire

Introduction The Roman Empire, was one of the most powerful empires in the world. The very mention of the name evoked wondrous feats of military daring, innovation in architecture and imaginable wonders of engineering. Rome herself was, literally, seen as the light, in an otherwise dark world and all of this magnificence was made possible due to the Roman system of taxation. Roman taxation system helped to build a solid economic foundation of the Roman Empire. So here comes to a question: how did the Roman taxation work? Since we all know that nobody would love paying taxes, but how did the Roman taxation gain the general support and sustain the system successfully? While there was not only one kind of taxes collected but also with different

Money from taxes were being well used in different aspects. First, it benefited the national finance by easing its financial burden as it did not have to rely so much on the upper classes and capitalists’ donation or the Empire’s personal property (According to the exploits recorded, the Empire Augustus always use his own property to pay for the social expenditure when the taxation system was not yet clear and perfect ) to pay for any expenditure. Second, more money collected from the taxes could be allocated to aspects like social and military. It helped to ensure the stability of the society and provide a better living standard when more resources were put into the social welfare. It was not only benefit the general public, but also the Empire itself by gaining the support from

Although there may not be complete details and historical data for the Roman taxation, we can still find out its characteristic and impacts towards the Roman Empire by looking at the taxes imposed or by researching the historical facts. By dividing into two main forms of taxes: direct tax and indirect tax, it helped to make things clear when collecting taxes from all areas. As well as making good use of the money by allocating the resources to different aspects, the taxation system was successfully gained the large support from the general public in the early period. When people could experience a high living standard with a safe and stable society by only paying the low taxes, it became the recipe of success in maintaining the system. However, when the taxation system was being changed in ages and became a high-taxes policy, the poor would try all their effort to escape from the heavy taxes burden while the rich had the power to refuse paying the taxes. Without the support of taxes from the citizens, the taxation system fell, as well as the Roman economy. When the economic crisis revealed, the collapse of the Roman Empire was inevitably with the economic factors.After analyzing the details of the taxation system, it shows clearly that the taxation system had played an important role in the Roman