Britannian Tax Council

The Britannian Tax Council is the government agency in Britannia responsible for calculation and collection of taxes from the kingdom's income-earning citizens and businesses. It is headquartered in the capital city of Britain.

History
While Britannia had enacted some form of taxation upon its populace since the Age of Enlightenment, it was only in the relative stability of the two centuries following the end of the gargoyle wars, that a bureaucratic organization arose to handle payments to the government.

In Ultima VII's days of progressive government involvement in public works, taxes were used to construct roads and wells, to subsidize farmers impacted by the seven year drought, to back research and training in the field of health care, and to train the guard-based militia. Unfortunately, despite political rhetoric to the contrary, taxes were also used to maintain the estates of the hereditary nobility, who had a comparatively light economic burden to that of the middle and lower working classes. Such an uneven socio-economic divide led to unrest for many of those disenfranchised by the system, and numerous citizens had troubles maintaining their livelihood in light of the heavy taxation.

Some of these people became so desperate that they went into hiding, and once normal civilians such as Murray, Myrtle and Garok Al-Mat ended up in the position of fugitives due to the specter of over-taxation - and in light of High Court prisoners such as D'Rel enduring life imprisonment for tax evasion, such extreme actions proved more than understandable.

While it is likely that such heavy-handed policies were reformed during the days of Reconstruction which followed the destruction of the Black Gate, the slow decline of Britannia in the years of Imbalance and havoc that followed eventually saw the disappearance of the BTC as an institution. By the dark days of the Avatar's final adventures in Ultima IX, the Council was visibly absent from British society, with an archaic "charity tax" being implemented throughout the capital city instead - hearkening back to the days of Blackthorn's draconian  Law of Sacrifice.

Members
At the time of the BTC's sole appearance in Ultima VII, mayor Patterson of Britain was the president of the Britannian Tax Council, with the only other identifiable member of the organization being Cynthia, the teller at the Royal Mint.