Ferme générale

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The Ferme générale (roughly translated General Finance Lease Office of the Kingdom ) was an institution founded in absolutist France by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1681, the purpose of which was to collect tax leases . Colbert was appointed Secretary of State of the Royal Household (Secrétaire d'État à la Maison) by Louis XIV in 1668 . Up to this point in time, different leases existed side by side.

Under the reign of Louis XV in 1728, the previous individual leases were distributed to 40 members over six years after they were united to form the ferme générale . From 1755 there were 60 members. The ferme générale generated almost half of the state income of the Ancien Régime .

precursor

The gabelle should first be mentioned as a forerunner organization . It was conceived and raised as a temporary construction during the reign of Philip IV in 1286, but then prevailed as a permanent tax revenue instrument under Charles V. The gabelle made in France originally represented a tax collection on all types of goods; other forms were the gabella emigrationis (a tax that was levied on emigrants for property they had taken with them) and the gabella hereditatis , which had to be paid for an inheritance or gift going abroad.

The Ferme générale was founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert for the purpose of collecting tax leases . Before the introduction of the tax lease there were different leases next to each other. With the beginning of the reign of Louis XV. and the takeover of government by Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury in 1726, in 1728 the individual leases were combined to form the ferme générale .

The cinq grosses fermes were leased to individual Fermiers Généraux for a certain period of time :

  • Gabelles or salt tax;
  • Tax levies around the city of Paris, that is, taxes on some staple foods, e.g. B. oil, sugar, wine, etc .;
  • Contract taxes;
  • Tobacco taxes (established between 1674 and 1675);
  • Taxes for the French territories in North America known as domaine d'occident or Ferme d'occident créée (they were also created between 1674 and 1675);
  • also the taxes on stamp paper Ferme du papier timbré (also introduced between 1674 and 1675, see also Révolte du papier timbré ).

Explanations

The tax lease is a method of collecting taxes in which a state does not collect taxes and duties itself, but through private individuals (so-called tax leaseholders, fermiers généraux ), to whom the tax revenue is leased against prepayment or current payments. The payments from the tax tenants can be set by the state, or the right to levy taxes can be auctioned in advance. In the ancien régime in France, the Ferme générale was an institution organized in the above sense, whose task was to collect customs duties and excise taxes on behalf of the king within existing six-year contracts.

With the Compte rendu au Roi or financial report to the king of February 19, 1781, the then French finance minister Jacques Necker reported about the current state of royal state finances and also gave an account of his previous reform policy.

The contractor, i.e. the tax leaseholder ( fermier général ), undertook to pay the state treasury in the amount of the fixed rent and in return received a surplus after the tax was levied. An upper limit was set for this remuneration from 1780. The Ferme générale had to pay 90 million livres per year for the lease between 1768 and 1774 . A fermier général was therefore obliged to advance 1.5 million livres. Not all of the tenants were able to make such a large advance payment on their own; thus several people got together behind the name of a fermier , they were called assistants. The fermier had an annual right to 2400 livres of expenses, 24,000 livres of fees, 10% interest for the first million and 6% interest for every further half a million for his capital advanced to the state treasury . The annual income of a fermier général was around 157,000 livres (for comparison: a middle-class civil servant had an annual salary of less than 1,000 livres.)

Formations in the 18th century

The wall of the general tenants ( Mur des Fermiers généraux ) in Paris was built between 1785 and 1788. According to Louis-Sébastien Mercier , there were 60 barriers at the outposts and access roads in the suburbs of Paris, 24 of which were main barriers and two inlets on the waterways, which two customs ships had been used to monitor. Customs officers were active at these points. If the regulations were violated, a protocol was drawn up and a corresponding fine was imposed.

A wing of the barrière d'Enfer : it is one of the checkpoints in the Mur des Fermiers généraux , now Place Denfert-Rochereau

The Ferme générale was an institution of the Ancien Régime. She found herself exposed to severe criticism during the French Revolution . The Ferme Générale was abolished in 1790. The leading members were executed on the scaffold, a total of 28 former members of the consortium were guillotined on May 8, 1794 , including Antoine Lavoisier and the father of his wife Marie Anne Pierrete Paulze Lavoisier , Jacques Paulze (1723-1794).

After the French Revolution, a fundamental change was brought about in the previous situation. In 1789 all tax exemptions and privileges were abolished in France and the general, evenly distributed property tax was introduced. This assessment of direct taxes , which then included property and building taxes , was laid down in the constituent assembly by a law dated December 1, 1790. Several ordinances appeared on the implementation procedure, and the law was finally passed on November 23, 1798.

List of main customs tenants ( fermiers généraux )

literature

  • Martin Hackenberg: The leasing of duties and taxes. A legal transaction of territorial financial administration in the Old Reich, illustrated using the example of the Electorate of Cologne. (= Studies on Policey and Policey Science). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-465-03177-6 .
  • Herwig Baum: The development of the central administration in France in the 17th / 18th centuries. Century. Grin Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-638-68298-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ferenc Szabadváry: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. The researcher and his time 1743–1794. Budapest Joint edition of the Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest and the Scientific Publishing Society, Stuttgart 1973, p. 27 ff.
  2. ↑ Martin Hackenberg: The leasing of duties and taxes. A legal transaction of territorial financial administration in the Old Reich, illustrated using the example of the Electorate of Cologne. (= Studies on Policey and Policey Science). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-465-03177-6 , p. 5
  3. ↑ Ferenc Szabadváry: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. The researcher and his time 1743–1794. Budapest Joint edition of the Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest and the Wissenschaftlichen Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1973, pp. 27–28
  4. ↑ Le tableau de Paris. [1781/88]. Édition établie sous la direction de Jean-Claude Bonnet, 2 vols., Paris 1994 in German translation Louis-Sebastien Mercier: Tableau de Paris. Images from pre-revolutionary Paris. Edited by W. Tschöke, Manesse Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-7175-1776-7 , pp. 41-51
  5. ↑ France from the Ancien Régime to the First Republic (PDF; 38 kB)