Though back then taxes were based more on property value than income (also the reason why Romans came up with the census)

Income taxation is actually relativel novel

Even if it exists on paper in the third world really it doesn't apply there to this day

African states would prolly be better able to tax it by using the old model

Iirc Romes tax income was mainly based on tarifs and on property

Yeah that too

Afaik Romans taxed Britain more pre conquest than post

Yeah

And of course they had to pay to prevent uprising and whatnot

Egypt was the most profitable region

Iirc this was also the reason they didn't expand into Jemen

Much cheaper to trade with them then to conquer them

Maybe they should've had something like internal tariffs

the romans were proto georgists then?

Because that's the easiest way to tax

Of course only until you can effectively tax property and whatnot

They had a tax for all trade that past trough Mare Nostrum

@Galahad No the property values changed from time to time and this was taken into account with the census

Georgism is more rigid

And punishes large land owners

Sicily and Egypt were iirc two of the most valuable roman teritories

Yes

why sicily

Food

sorry for the questions im not an expert on this by any means

Massive grain production

Rome itself was basically a huge waste of money

ah that makes sense

i assume its because sicily was less mountainous that the italian mainland?

and better soil maybe

It's also one of the reasons they never conquerd Germany

Sicily has good land

They did but didn't hold on to it for very long afaik

Germany was econolicaly usless

Yeah

they never took all of "Germany"

I occupied is a better term

Germany could've been nice for pasturing possibly

But Romans weren't into that

But the forests

It became very good land