Bonnet, Guy-Joseph (General)

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Haiti: State Against Nation. The Origin and Legacy of Duvalierism
Ardouin, A. Beaubrun. Etudes sur l’Histoire d’Haïti [1853-60].
De Pradine, Linstant. Receuil général des lois et acte du gouvernement d’Haïti depuis la proclamation de son indépendence. Vol. 1, 1804-08.

Bonnet is remembered for leading the Haitian Senate to approve two pieces of legislation in early March 1807: the first was to name Pétion, Alexandre the president of the western and southern parts of Haiti;
General Bonnet’s second claim to fame was to get the Senate to approve a tax package.
The approved tax package had two distinct features to it: 1), customhouses became tax collection centers for all sorts of agricultural commodities; and 2), the early country’s two major exports, coffee and sugar, received differential treatment when it came to tax penalties.
By 1810, around 73% of all government revenues were collected at the customhouses, with export taxes and fees accounting for more than 50% of the national budget (Trouillot, 61).
Sugar and its derivatives were taxed internally but exempted from export tax;
Coffee, however, received the bulk of the high export tax penalties.

Remember, around the 1807 time frame, the Haitian states (and their intendant oligarchs) were primarily focused on the revenues from sugar production exports
The peasantry and small farmers, however, spent their labor on low-friction and high-yield coffee production.
As a result, the effects of General Bonnet’s taxation laws were significantly regressive and set the tone for Haiti’s economic tax policies for hundreds of years.
According to Trouillot, Bonnet’s new law clearly favored the haves over the have-nots by shifting “… the burden of state financing from the major planters, producing sugar, to the peasants and small farmers, producing coffee. “