It wasn't royal taxes that supported the bulk of the frivolity (though a part doubtless contributed), it was rent and seigneurial dues in cash and labour along with tithes of perhaps 7-8%. Pierre Goubert (The ancien regime: French society 1600-1750) estimated the total burden at "this fifth or half (call it a third?)": it was the assemblage of "feudal" burdens rather than the state tax element (which Goubert reckons at 5-10%) that agitated the peasant majority in 1789.

How much of this windfall (to which we might add receipts from directly-exploited lands, public office, tax farms and commercial enterprise) went on the luxury of a narrow hereditary elite of some 400,000 members of greater or lesser noble households rather than administration, estate management, improvements or good works? It's impossible to say, but annual incomes among the very greatest noble families reached as much as a million livres when the average household disposed of under a thousand livres and a peasant household a good deal less.