(TikTok screencap)

POV looking up from the ground at an armored knight with the caption “E-mails? Work in the morning?
School? Filing taxes?
What are you talking about?
You must have hit your head pretty hard”
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[–] 2 points 8 months ago

The amount (usually much less - unless there was some marauding army nearby) aside, it was more complicated than that. Taxation was delegated across a hierarchy of various stages; at each stage a mixture of negotiation, deception and coercion would be used to determine the taxation amount. The lowest-level tax collectors typically worked akin to a mob protection racket, and their own livelihood depended on extracting a surplus above what their employer (typically some noble) demanded.

Certainly substantially less transparent and simple than clicking through an online form in a few minutes.

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