Pylimitics

In medieval England, specifically in the Norman era, the lords of manors owned all the land around them, including the land where peasants lived and farmed. The lords taxed the peasants, charging them something called “tallage.” “Tallage” was also a tax levied by the king on all the “royal towns,” which were towns located on land owned by the king (which was probably most of the land that wasn’t specifically owned by a minor lord). The “tallage” was levied on “demesne” lands — that’s any land belonging to an estate or a lord (it’s pronounced “dih-meen”). 

There’s a clue in the pronunciation of demesne — it sounds like “domain,” and in fact both words are from the same root Old French word: “demein.” “Tallage” is also from Old French (the Normans brought the word with them, although they probably didn’t invent the idea of the wealthy taxing the poor). Tallage comes from “taillage”, which had to do with cutting, of all things. It’s also where “tailor” comes from. “Taillare” is the Latin word (meaning “to split”) that gave rise to taillage and tailler in Old French. A “tailler” was pretty much the same as a tailor is today: someone who cuts fabric and sews it into garments, but the word was also applied to people who did other kinds of cutting — someone grafting plants would need to cut them, and a stonemason would have to cut stones, and both of those were “taillage”. 

The development of “tallage” as a word for a tax might have been the earliest instance of the notion that in a transaction, someone might make a demand to be “given their cut.”