Financing the state: Government tax revenue from 1800 to 2012

Abstract The 19th and 20th centuries are key periods in the development of the modern fiscal state, but a lack of reliable historical revenue data remains an obstacle for students of the period. In this research note, we introduce the Government Revenue Dataset (Govrev), which provides information on central government revenues in 31 countries in Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan from 1800 to 2012. Compared to previous efforts, our dataset is an improvement both in coverage and in validity. We use the new dataset to reanalyze the relationship between elite competition and taxation, showing that, contrary to previous findings, direct taxation is not driven by elite competition. In fact, thanks to the fine-grained detail of our data, we find that elite competition is associated with a heavier reliance on indirect taxation.