The taille was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien Régime France. The tax was imposed on each household and was based on how much land it held, and was paid directly to the state.

The ancien régime, now a common metaphor for "a system or mode no longer prevailing", was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France that the French Revolution overturned through its abolition in 1790 of the feudal system of the French nobility and in 1792 through its execution of the king and declaration of a republic.