C
Explanation:
France under the Ancien Régime was divided society into three estates: the First Estate (clergy); the Second Estate (nobility); and the Third Estate (commoners). One critical difference between the estates of the realm was the burden of taxation. The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded from taxation while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes.
The desire for more efficient tax collection was one of the major causes for French administrative and royal centralization. The taille became a major source of royal income. Exempted from the taille were clergy and nobles (with few exceptions). Different kinds of provinces had different taxation obligations and some among the nobility and the clergy paid modest taxes, but the majority of taxes was always paid by the poorest. Moreover, the church separately taxed the commoners and the nobles.
As the French state continuously struggled with the budget deficit, some attempts to reform the skewed system took place under both Louis XIV and Louis XV. The greatest challenge to introduce any changes was an old bargain between the French crown and the nobility: the king could rule without much opposition from the nobility if only he refrained from taxing them.
New taxes introduced under Louis XIV were a step toward equality before the law and sound public finance, but so many concessions and exemptions were won by nobles and bourgeois that the reform lost much of its value.
Although Louis XV also attempted to impose new taxes on the First and Second Estates, with all the exemptions and reductions won by the privileged classes the burden of the new tax once again fell on the poorest citizens.
Historians consider the unjust taxation system, continued under Louis XVI, to be one of the causes of the French Revolution.
