Paulette (tax)

La Paulette (after the financier Charles Paulet, who proposed it) was the name commonly given to the "annual right" ("droit annuel"), a special tax levied by the French Crown during the "Ancien Régime". It was first instituted on December 12, 1604 by King Henry IV's minister Maximilien de Béthune. Under the terms of the "Paulette", the holders of various government and judicial offices could secure the right to transfer their office at will by annually paying the Crown one sixtieth of the value of their office.

The venality (and, by extension, hereditary transmission) of government and judicial offices was a common practice in France since the late Middle Ages, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century the practice had extended to almost all levels of the ever-increasing Renaissance state administration (such as seats in the "Parlements") and played an important role in state finances. Custom had permitted officers to transfer their offices ("résignation") to their heirs with royal permission in return for the payment of a fee. Before it was made illegal in 1521, It had been possible to leave open-ended the date that the transfer was to take effect. In 1534, the "forty days rule" was instituted (adapted from church practice), which made the successor's right void if the preceding office holder died within forty days of the transfer (in which case the office reverted to the state); however, a new fee, called the "survivance jouissante" protected against the forty days rule. [J.H.M. Salmon. "Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen, 1975. p. 77. ISBN 0-416-73050-7] A modification of the preceding, the Paulette tax substituted an annual tax to protect against the clauses of the forty days rule.

The Paulette tax provided the crown with a steady source of revenue while consolidating the practice of hereditary government offices. This left the administration of justice in France in the hands of a new and increasingly powerful hereditary class of magistrates, which came to be known as the "noblesse de robe" ("nobility of the gown"), in contrast with the traditional aristocracy, known as the "noblesse d'épée" ("nobility of the sword"). This system was abolished after the French Revolution.

While the tax provided revenue for the Crown, the salaries of government officials stressed the royal funds and forced the Crown to tax the lower classes heavily. During the rule of Louis XIV, his minister of finance Jean Baptiste Colbert bought back the offices from the nobles in order to reduce the spending of the king.

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