For a Muslim average earnings throughout Algeria were estimated at 16,000 francs a year — whereas the European equivalent was 450,000 francs, or nearly thirty times as high. At the same time, the taxes he paid on his meagre pittance seemed unfairly weighted. It was reckoned that the 100,000 most impoverished Algerian families might be milked of twelve per cent of their incomes; while at the other end of the scale the 14,000 best off (of whom 10,000 were European), with incomes five times higher than the average for French families, were called upon to pay only twenty-nine per cent of earnings vastly larger than those of the Muslims.

XREF: Connects to patterns of regressive colonial taxation elsewhere in French and European empires, where extraction fell heaviest on subject populations.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 186