What was the Roman Empire Tax Structure Like?

by Croutons

Was running water charged for as a utility? Were there general sales taxes? Were there property taxes?

crow_hill

It depends a lot on the exact timeframe but in general, yes.

There were sales taxes. Vespasian's famous line "money has no odor" was in response to Titus protesting about a tax on human urine. Titus was complaining because he thought the tax was crass (the urine was used in the cleaning of clothes, counter intuitively).

Property taxes were assessed when possible--as were wealth taxes on goods, slaves and so on--but the Empire had a hard time keeping track of all of its people, so they often taxed whole communities and left it up to local leadership to scrounge for the money. Which also led to tax-collecting contractors and all sorts of interesting corruption.

I'm not certain about a water tax, but there were definitely "tap fees," where if an individual wanted to hook their house up to the aqueduct, they had to pay substantially for the privilege. Or bribe the local authorities.

But also remember that for large sweeps of its history, Rome's armies were a money making machine that would go out shake down all of, say, Greece and bring home the plunder. During those times, the government could function mostly on booty and only taxed the provincials. Not citizens.