Abstract

Many royal privileges have been preserved from the Jagiellonian period, releasing the townsmen from the obligation to pay taxes. The entries of these regulations appear both in the books of the royal register (often in an abbreviated form) and in the form of diplomas, sometimes incorporated into city cartularies. An increasing number of the abovementioned regulations is visible in the royal register, especially since the reign of Sigismund I, which can be explained by both greater care taken to enter the temporary acts into the register, and the intensification of issuing such regulations in view of the increasingly frequent (ultimately regular) adoption of the urban revenue tax in Sejm. Tax liberations in the Jagiellonian period belonged to the exclusive competence of the king; therefore, these documents belonged to leges speciales passed in opposi- tion to the revenues binding for all, and thus falling into the category of the Polish ius commune. The tax privileges served primarily to help cities ruined by natural disasters and war turmoil. The period of exemption depended on the type of tax, while the goal of liberation was most fully achieved by longer exemptions from the basic tax — the royal urban revenue tax. The much shorter period of exemption from the excise tax was justified by its consumption character and the fact that it was an indirect tax, as the buyer of the goods was in fact charged for its costs. The circumstances in which the tax exemptions were issued make the tax liberation privileges a sad testimony to frequent fires, which in the vast majority of cases consumed the wooden build- ings of the towns of the Jagiellonian era.