Recently, new strands of literature have given impulse to the study of global fiscal history and ‘New Fiscal History and Sociology’,1 which has also spawned renewed interest in the role of taxation in the establishment of colonial empires.2 Surprisingly however, metropolitan and colonial tax regimes are seldom seen through the same reference framework. We demonstrate that colonial and metropolitan tax systems developed in an intertwined way, and that fiscal ideas moved freely through empires. Exemplifying the introduction of taxes in the Netherlands and its colony in present-day Indonesia, the Dutch East Indies, we highlight how metropolitan and colonial tax regimes intertwined, copied from, overlapped with and depended on each other and developed in tandem with one another, demonstrating how important. © The editors and contributors severally 2023.