Selective taxes on goods and services, often referred to as excise taxes, are among the oldest forms of taxation in the The salt excise, for instance, was considered a goldmine for the European sovereign during theMiddle Ages, because sources of supplywere few and could be easily controlled. Interestingly, the prominence of excise taxation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed much to the Dutch, whose duties on beer, sugar, salt, spirits, and other goods were called In fact, excise taxation was so widely applied that an English observer noted that ‘a fish dish eaten in Holland pays 30 excises’.3 From la terre classique de la fiscalite.
