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Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax
- Y_Y 5y agoMaybe they should apply to the king of Italy for relief, since it is from his divine right to all the land that the fief is granted to his vassals.
- tsimionescu 5y agoI'm not sure that's true, the monarchy in Italy was relatively modern and short lived, preceded by a patchwork of republics with wonderful election systems. Here's an example of how the elections for Doxe de Venezia worked in the Republic of Venice[0]: > Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, and the nine elected forty-five. These forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge. Election required at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice
- karatinversion 5y agoNot just republics - this particular claim descends through the short-lived King of Italy (which missed the age of absolutism by several centuries) from the Papal States.
- toyg 5y agoI guess this is a joke about the continued claim of the Savoy house to a title that was abolished 75 years ago, and which was pretty tenuous to begin with (they're basically a French family, who effectively conquered the country in the XIX century by exploiting unification movements across the area - which were, ironically, ideologically republican, but had to accept the monarchy out of realpolitik).
- avereveard 5y agoit's also unclear whose person would carry the title, even if the title where valid, as while Amedeo's lineage would be the actual claimant, the Vittorio lineage is strongly opposing that and they're presenting themselves as the successors.
- znpy 5y agothere's no such thing as king of italy. and since the thing came up: there is no such thing as prince of italy either, nor princess or queen. and by the way, the savoia line of blood isn't even legitimate as heir to the now-nonexistant throne. the legitimate heirs would be the descendant of Aimone duke of Aosta, which nowadays have better things to do.
- bonzini 5y agoThat was the joke.
- blackdev1l 5y agoand this belongs here because...?
- pmlnr 5y agoBecause someone posted it, and others voted on it.
- azernik 5y agoNote the submission guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
- kwhitefoot 5y agoBecause the person who posted it thought someone else on Hacker News might be interested. That's pretty much the only reason one needs. I was interested enough to read the article and you were interested enough,albeit in a negative sense, to add your comment; so it seems they were right.
- bbarnett 5y agoI wonder why a 5 year dormant account would be reactivated to ask this question.
- beebeepka 5y agoBelieve it or not, HN threads are have been a great source of info on global subjects for me. Especially during the day when threads are not US centric
- truth_ 5y agoI currently read everything published by Rest of World. It's a new website focusing on tech scenes of countries other than the US. The quality is very high. Highly recommend.
- avereveard 5y agoWhat a boutade. Even if all fiefdom weren't canceled after the demonarchization process, Italy still has usucapione laws that are fairly short and to the point.
- qubex 5y agoFor the uninitiated, usocapione is the legal process whereby those who are in possession of an item (in this case, land) can become legal owners over a period of time. Presumably the lack of enforcement over a very long time (60 years being mentioned in the article) implies that these feudal rights might not be enforceable anymore.
- pmlnr 5y agoIn the UK, during the purchase of our house we had to take a "chancel liability insurance", because our freehold once belonced to a rectory, so to protect ourselves from repair liability towards a chapel that has been here for centuries, we had to pay a one-off insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability Leftover laws are weird things. EDIT: PS: sadly, the legendary, obligatory archery practice - http://www.lordsandladies.org/the-butts.htm http://www.lordsandladies.org/the-butts.htm SFW ; "butt" was the name of an archery range - was removed from the law in England: https://loweringthebar.net/2010/06/do-englishmen-still-have-to-show-up-for-longbow-practice.html https://loweringthebar.net/2010/06/do-englishmen-still-have-...
- Accacin 5y agoYeah, in a town near the one I grew up in, there's a street called 'Butt Hole Lane'. That made me laugh a lot when I was younger, even when my parents explained to me what the 'Butt' in this context meant.
- peteretep 5y agoCould have been worse... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane
- toyg 5y agoEven without going archaic, I had to take insurance when I bought a terrace, because a lease existed on the land at some point but the owning company had dissolved years prior and no lease had been paid for a long time. This is very common in a country (UK) where the State has had strong continuity for several centuries, so land rights and entitlements can be tracked very far back.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoThese things really are to extract money and commissions during the property purchase. In most cases there is no issue at all but no-one is going to question paying a few pounds extra on a property purchase "for peace of mind".
- pjc50 5y agoNow wondering which European countries still have intact feudal law. Scotland abolished feudal tenure in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc._(Scotland)_Act_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc... ; most of the feu burdens were abolished or explicitly ported across. England&Wales still retains the feudal system in places and occasionally people are hit by "chancel repair liability" or somesuch. The chivalric court still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Chivalry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Chivalry "prior to [1954], the Court had not sat for two centuries and before hearing the case, the Court first had to rule whether it still existed" As does the last relic of real feudal power: the House of Lords, the last of Europe's unelected legislatures outside a microstate. Conversely there are a few recipients of ancient national debt: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-bond-still-pays-interest-280-years-later-2019-01-04 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-bond-still-pays-inter...
- Turing_Machine 5y agoThere are some vestiges of "udal" land law that are still valid in the Shetland and Orkney Islands. This comes down from Norse law (the Norse controlled those islands for long periods of time). A major difference is that under the law in the rest of the UK a coastal landowner only owns the land down to the high tide line, while under udal law the landowner owns the land down to the low tide line. This obviously has implications for docks, pipelines, cables, etc. Also, in some of the Channel Islands, Queen Elizabeth isn't technically the Queen, but rather the Duke of Normandy (despite being female, she's called the "Duke", or "The Queen, our Duke").
- Mordisquitos 5y agoAlso, while swans are the property of the Crown in most of the United Kingdom, they are the property of the people in the Orkney Islands according to Udal Law [0]: > Today, the Queen still has ownership of all swans in the UK except in one small corner of the British Isles - the Orkney Isles. > Under Udal Law, the ancient Norse system of inheritance and law, which the Viking settlers brought to Orkney, the swan is the property of the people, rather than the Crown. > The case was proven in 1910 by a Kirkwall lawyer who, accompanied by his friend, the Procurator-Fiscal, went out to Harray Loch and shot a swan. The case went to the High Court and the Crown lost. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160725172726/http://www.scotsman.com/news/sir-peter-s-taste-for-swan-has-him-fall-foul-of-law-1-740320 https://web.archive.org/web/20160725172726/http://www.scotsm...
- ajdlinux 5y agoHere's a fun English type of real property right that has taken some people by surprise in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability
- LatteLazy 5y agoWhen my brother bought his house (UK, built in the early 2000s), we had to buy insurance against the local church needing a new roof. The residents of the area were responsible for local church upkepe because of a medieval edict. It was only about £40 luckily...
- sonthonax 5y agoThat insurance is still a tax, but a really old fashioned one, where private tax farmers collect and administer the treasury rather than the state. That £40 must actually cover the costs of the local church's roof.
- LatteLazy 5y agoAgreed. I'm always impressed by the stickability of these things. No one has said "this is bs, fix your own roof, it's not 1400 anymore".
- mring33621 5y ago...Draws sword
- azernik 5y agoNote that in a common law system, this would be thrown out of court under either "acquiescence" (if you don't raise a fuss for a very long time when someone unknowingly infringes your rights, you can lose those rights), or "laches" (if you wait long enough to make a legal claim that the defendant is injured by e.g. having made economic decisions in ignorance of that claim). Not sure about the equivalent Italian law, but I would be deeply surprised if there isn't something similar.
- carlob 5y ago> Not sure about the equivalent Italian law, but I would be deeply surprised if there isn't something similar. It's actually in the constitution: hereditary titles are no longer recognized.
- 3v1n0 5y agoThat's even better concept, although that's related to the title but not sure if applies to properties.
- azernik 5y agoThat's a more specific thing regarding hereditary titles. Acquiescence in the common law applies to any right. Could be water rights, grazing rights, certain intellectual property rights (though those are generally registered in a way that infringing on them legally "unknowing" is hard), &c If I have grazing rights on land that someone else owns, but don't actually graze there for decades and a new owner doesn't know about those rights, I can't then come back mad that his new fence infringes on the right that I've never asserted and he's not aware of.
- carlob 5y agoIn Italy we have something like that, that should translate to usucaption[0] or acquisitive prescription. The term for real estate is 20 years, for other types of property it is shorter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption
- markvdb 5y agoA similar feudal tax was still levied in part of the Netherlands until 2014. [0] [0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dertiende_penning https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dertiende_penning
- rocqua 5y agoPer that article, in some places the tax had already been abolished simply by not having been levied for a long time. I would hope something similar would apply in Italy too.
- 3v1n0 5y agoThe news isn't so new (https://www.lastampa.it/topnews/primo-piano/2021/03/12/news/san-felice-circeo-la-beffa-dei-baroni-per-vendere-casa-ci-dovete-pagare-1.40014423 https://www.lastampa.it/topnews/primo-piano/2021/03/12/news/...), but doesn't look something that will really end up well for those "barons" (no title is recognized in Italy - as should be everywhere). However if they want the rights, they're possible legible also of having to pay to the tenants for all the improvements they did so far, and very likely taxes on the property. So... Might end up a quite bad move.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- riccardomc 5y agoItalian sources[1] say that the right of the Auguet Barons is 30% of the sale price of a house in the oldest part of the village. This is very different from what the SMH article says. [1]https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2021/03/12/news/nicola-zingaretti-san-felice-circeo-regione-lazio-baroni-tassa-medioevale-vendere-casa-jamet-aguet-26512225/ https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2021/03/12/news/nicola-zing...
- Spooky23 5y agoI grew up in an area of upstate New York where the land was mostly apportioned into feudal estates by the Dutch. There were anti-rent rebellions in the 19th century and the descendants of the patroons stopped collecting the rent. But… folks never had title to their land and were effectively stuck until a law was passed in the 1960s. It’s really interesting as the effect is that many families have lived there for 400 years, and newcomers all appeared in the 1970s onward.
- nomercy400 5y agoKind of strange that the Dutch are blamed for this, when the British took over mid-1600 and the Americans after the independence war end-1700. Those are two moments where this whole notion of feudal estates could easily have been abolished, but for some reason the new rulers decided against this.
- BobbyJo 5y agoDid they decide against it, or did they just not pay any attention to the area at all?
- Spooky23 5y agoA little bit of both. Albany was a minor transport and trading hub where Dutch remained the primary language for some time. It later became a regional banking and rail/canal hub. Most of the patroon land started getting sold off as the value skyrocketed when the Erie Canal and railroads were built. The area I initially referred to was a backwater area where the land had limited value due to topography.
- Spooky23 5y agoI’m not “blaming” anyone, these are just facts on the ground from nearly 500 years ago. I was introduced to this stuff as a teenager working for an old farm - their family was one of a few that had a land grant. The original taxes were 10 pigs and some wheat! The Dutch colonial system, continued in some form for a period of time. I’m afraid I’m ignorant of the details and complexity of land policy as the English, the pre-Constitutional US and current US government took over. Adding to the complexity, New York has had at least 4 constitutions in the post-colonial era! There’s similar examples in the US — Baltimore has or had land rents from the British colonial era. Personally it’s a fascinating subject to me, and if I was a history professor, I would have probably studied it! Alas, I’m not.
- williesleg 5y ago"I DECLARE....BANKRUPTCY!!!!" - Michael Scott Seems you should be able to take the land back with a declaration just like they took the land before. Someone took it originally.
- notorandit 5y agoNo way. The owner of the land is inscribed in the cadastral books. If he's from Swiss, then he can collect the money. But also pay the overdue land taxes. If he is not ...
- znpy 5y agofunnily enough, this hasn't come up on italian newspapers. I checked the Corriere (corriere.it), Repubblica (repubblica.it) and il fatto quotidiano (ilfattoquotidiano.it) since they're three different voices with vastly different opinions on what to report and what not to report. interesting.
- RNiK 5y agoCheck better => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27275016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27275016 => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27275025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27275025
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoI wonder what obligations the Swiss lords have been neglecting. Perhaps the townsfolk could bill for absent services? They are not peasants, as such things likely don't exist in modern Italy. So how can they owe anything? The Swiss baron's descendants - are they still barons? Can they still hold a fief? Perhaps the Swiss baron's lord can be convinced to levy a similar tax on them, and return the money to the town. It's very interesting.
- AdrianB1 5y agoWhy do you assume taxes are a payment for services? In most cases there is no written contract with rights and obligations of each party and there is no implied right or obligation of any sort.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoNo, not at all. But being a Baron over somebody may have obligations? If they were not rendered (it was all neglected for 60 years) perhaps something could be negotiated based on that. E.g. the baron provides protection - that certainly wasn't happening. And I do note that there's obligation to the Baron's lord. Doing an appeal there is another route.
- FpUser 5y ago>"Why do you assume taxes are a payment for services?" Because the only alternative in this case is the outright theft. >"there is no implied right or obligation of any sort." Sorry but there is implied obligation. I totally expect to get some services in return for money taken from me and I suspect I am not alone. For experiment try sending part of government that does actual services for constituents for a year long vacation and see what happens.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- refurb 5y agoMexican Ranchos are still recognized in California. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchos_of_California https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchos_of_California There was a process for them to be “registered” after the US took over. And many were split up as the owners had little cash to pay for upkeep. But there are properties that derive from ranchos that carry on the rights. I recall on oceanside plot where beach access was not open to the public (contravening CA law) as it wasn’t a requirement in Mexican law.
- kuroguro 5y agoReminds me of the old obscure UK laws that make it illegal to carry a plank on the pavement or "play annoying games" (lol). https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/03/Legal_Oddities.pdf https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/03/Legal_Oddities...
- rini17 5y agoConsider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law. In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoSounds a lot like what's been going on in Israel / Palestine.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- afiori 5y agoSpecifically the first kind, much less of the second.
- tpm 5y agoAdd to that the Hungarian inheritance rules - properties were divided evenly between the heirs, so I can now own a 13/6240 of an agricultural field. The farm still pays me a small yearly dividend and offers to buy my share, but that's really everything what can be done with it.
- ww520 5y agoTaxation without representation. Time to have tea in the next meeting.
- vmception 5y agoWhy wasn’t there tax collected for 60 years? Which means it was being collected even in the 1950s Did a bookkeeper die? I think it will be useful to know what happened back then
- mustafa_pasi 5y agoI find these property rights that go back centuries a bit dubious. How was the property obtained in the first place? There were no modern laws at the time and common people had much fewer rights and protections. If the property was not obtained through outright violence, it was obtained in an environment that very much discriminated against common people, and God knows how much fraud and deception occurred. It actually happened in my hometown a couple of years ago that some people produced a document from the 1500s entitling them to a huge expanse of land. Now at the time the land was conquered through war, and then that empire collapsed and another occupying empire took its place and that one also collapsed, and yet another foreign people came and went before independence was finally declared. The people who actually lived on this land were always the same people. But somehow they don't have the right to the property that they lived on for almost a millennium, because a bunch of foreigners stole it through violence a few centuries ago and then handed what wasn't theirs to other foreigners. And now these foreigners think they have a claim to this land because their great ancestor murdered thousands of local people and took it for himself. The whole thing is ridiculous.
- lainga 5y agoOut of interest, was it the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluks (who were later replaced by the Brits or French)?
- amelius 5y agoYeah, but capitalism isn't exactly fair either, with wealth ending up at a small percentage of people who clearly didn't work as much or took as much risk as all the other people combined. So if you go with that argument, then a much bigger reform should happen, not just the annihilation of these taxes.
- nicoburns 5y agoParent doesn't question just taxes, they question property rights aka ownership. That is the much bigger reform you talk about.
- 5y ago
- koolba 5y ago> The feudal arrangement is so unusual it has prompted questions in parliament. Last year, MPs asked the economy minister if there were legal avenues to abolish the “burden”. That seems like it would have the reverse effect of acknowledging its legitimacy, at the very least retroactively.
- rikroots 5y agoA relatively common local tax in mediaeval England was a 'Scott' charge on property and/or land, used to fund some locally necessary common good. Because the charge was most often area-based, landowners/householders just outside of the charging area were said to get away 'Scott free' - a phrase still frequently encountered in UK English. For instance in the area where I grew up (Romney Marshes, Kent) a Scott tax used to be levied on local householders and landowners to help pay for the local sea defences (because: most of the Romney Marshes is below sea level). People living on land above sea level were exempt from the charge, thus 'Scott free'. The levy was paid in cash or thorn bushes; failure to pay led to an ear being nailed to the church door[1]. And the tax is still - apparently - alive today ... according to a brief report in the UK's Law Society's Gazette[2]. [1] - https://theromneymarsh.net/newhall https://theromneymarsh.net/newhall [2] - https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/unearthing-history/68506.article https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/unearthing-history/68506.a...
- brokencode 5y agoThis sounds like a perfect way to destroy your family’s reputation. I can’t imagine the thought process and sense of entitlement that leads you to try to become a feudal lord in the 21st century, but I know that I could never get along with somebody like that.
- TomMckenny 5y agoBut if they called it ‘rent’ instead of ‘tax’ there would be far less outrage. Strange value system.
- oriettaxx 5y agobefore refusing to pay, I would first check all the figures: that tax could be lower of what they do pay now as Italian council taxes (pretty expensive) :)