As Thomas Piketty and other economists have shown, inheritance tax in nineteenth-century France remained low. Although it provided a significant share of state revenues, rates were frozen throughout the century. Instead of progressive taxation based on wealth, the system imposed rates varying by kinship proximity to the deceased, with the lowest for first-degree relatives. This tax functioned less as a fiscal instrument than as an administrative one: its primary purpose was to register and track property transmission across generations, not to raise revenue or reduce inequality.
Alongside fiscal conservatism that avoided taxing private property, the state displayed an insatiable curiosity about the wealthiest families’ private capital and its inheritance. Beginning with the revolutionary government and intensifying under Napoleon, it developed unprecedented methods to follow the movement of land and capital through time and space.
This paper examines two mechanisms of that recording process. The first is the moral and personal statistics project, in which each prefect listed the wealthiest families in his region, their family situations, and expected inheritance divisions. Officials asked remarkably detailed questions: What were each daughter’s dowry and inheritance expectations? Where was the real estate located? Which distant cousin stood to inherit? The second mechanism is the déclarations de succession, introduced in 1791 with the first revolutionary succession laws. As the first instance of tax returns, it recorded each deceased person's estate and beneficiaries. The meticulous data it produced continues to inform economic historians today.
Why did the French state pursue information so aggressively while taxing so lightly? This paper uses this paradox—an informational appetite combined with fiscal restraint—to explore the relationship between private capital and bureaucratic state-building, the co-creation of state and elite power, and surveillance and taxation as competing strategies of control over private capital.