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All I know from my reading is that each planet is mandated to pay a tithe of bodies for the Imperial forces, and a tithe of psykers, for the black ships. Nothing else really dictates how much or how little? Like, is Catachan mandated to pay a tithe? What about Armagheddon? Is Mars? None of the moons of Baal seem to have to pay one, except for sending aspirants. But the idea that every planet has to pay the exact same is ludicrous. So going off the assumption that it's percentage based, would 1% of Global population make sense? Every 10 years or something? Is it actually mentioned anywhere how much the tithe is, or what is required?

Don’t know for sure but think it’s interpreted differently all over. And there will be plenty of corruption and wriggle room if you can play the political game.

I remember a story somewhere where the tithe was crippling a planets economy it was so high. No workforce, at least that was the governor's excuse for not paying it.

Sure someone will pile in and have more official answer for you. Pretty sure Mars will be exempt. They’re special.

Tithes are resources- the exact resources vary depending on what the planet can offer. A mining world will tithe mainly ores and minerals. A hive world tithes manpower and finished industrial goods. Agri worlds tithe food. Any world can raise guard regiments, and will be asked to do so in extremis, but many do not do so routinely.

The only thing a planet like Catachan offers is tough guardsmen, so they will likely only submit troops in their tithe.

Astartes worlds are exempt from tithes (their resources supply the Chapter), although some offer voluntary ones.

It is not clear how the Administratum calculates tithes, but each world is given a grade with an expected tithe level. The grades are not explained, but we have some mentioned in the lore- forge worlds and hive worlds have the highest tithe grades. Failing to meet this tithe without very good reason is a punishable offence for a planetary governor. If the region is embroiled in a large war, additional tithes will be exacted to deal with the threat. Sometimes additional tithes are levied for crusades too.

The Administratum is infamously slow to respond to changes, so their data on what output a planet has will be frequently out of date, leading to inaccurate tithe levels. That would account for some rapidly growing worlds beimg undertithed and declining worlds being overtithed. I am sure many palms get greased to ensure the tithe grade is as low as a planet can get away with!

Its based on planet population and industry output. A planet like Tanith exported material goods, primarily the unique product of Nalnwood, and eventually the population grew large enough to mandate an Imperial Guard founding (the Tanith 1st, 2nd, and 3rd).
Some planets are given exceptions based on certain criteria. Cadia for example, wasn't required to produce arms or goods and only served as an Imperial Guard factory. Forge Worlds are often exempt from requirements to produce soldiers for the Imperial Guard as they are required for arms manufacturing or produce various Mechanicus soldiers instead.
Adeptus Astartes homeworlds or fiefdom planets are generally exempt as well and operate in service to their Astartes masters rather than the Imperium as a whole. Khiavar is a Forge World that is entirely dedicated to producing arms and equipment for the Raven Guard rather than the Imperium or Mechanicus, for example.

All I know is from the book Shadowsword, where the Administratum deploys an enitire Guard Super heavy regiment to a agri-world because they refused the tithe. In the actual refusal scene the (?) queen of the world says their world has been stripped bare, and cannot defend itself from any of the actual threats. Those threats being Chaos raiders and Xeno Raiders. I feel like this is the actuality of the tithe. They don't really care about the safety of your world, only that they get the next few guard regiments worth of PDF conscripts every ten years or so. It's actually funny, because in the book the world is invaded by the Emperor's children, then demons, then the IG. Who essentially blow it all to hell, making it useless to the administratum in the end.

It is mostly determined by what the planet can give. By default, I think that the Tithes are most likely fair to what can be expected of the planet. Issues arise when there are disruptions which cause planets to fall into a tithe deficit, or perhaps a clerical error causes a planet to be assessed far above what it actually is.

If a planet falls into a deficit, then the pain happens and it could easily be unrecoverable. An agriworld has a bad harvest and are 20% short of quota. No problem, we'll tack 25% on to next years tithe plus interest. Well, you only met 110% of your quota, so we'll have to add an extra 15%. Well, we could just take a couple guard regiments and call it even. Oh? You're now short 35% on your quota due to labor shortages? Shame....

There's an organisation which determines it called the Officio Exacta. As noted, they base that on what the files say, not necessarily reality.

Tithe collection depends on the world and it's products, but aside from the troop contribution and harvest of psykers and blanks, its wildly variable be it depends what the world produces and what local worlds consume.

A "ranch" agri-world probably gives up most of its produces on an ongoing rolling basis because hive worlds need constant food shipments.

A hive world might lay down a percentage of industrial products for years or decades at a time.

In addition, political 'needs' and the crises of the moment will dictate whether greater tithes are required - in 'better' times this wouldnt happen.
old guard codex talked about how escalating eldar raids forced 50,000 new regiments to be tithed and how one planet had to induct 80% of its population.
As the codex used to say, depending on how hard the Imperium is pushed, it will respond in an equal manner.

We have some good examples of planets not routinely supplying tithes of guard excrpt during crises.

Tanith has already been mentioned- they had to raise their first regiments for the crusade to reclaim the Sabbat Worlds.

Semtexia is a mining world near Armageddon that had never raised a regiment until the Second War for Armageddon, when the Semtexian 1st was founded. By the Third War, Semtexia had raised 3 regiments to fight in the region. An emergency on the scale of Waaaagh Ghazgull was required for Semtexia to start supplying troops.

Semtexia… good grief. Someone phoned that one in

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All I know is from the book Shadowsword, where the Administratum deploys an enitire Guard Super heavy regiment to a agri-world because they refused the tithe. In the actual refusal scene the (?) queen of the world says their world has been stripped bare, and cannot defend itself from any of the actual threats. Those threats being Chaos raiders and Xeno Raiders. I feel like this is the actuality of the tithe. They don't really care about the safety of your world, only that they get the next few guard regiments worth of PDF conscripts every ten years or so. It's actually funny, because in the book the world is invaded by the Emperor's children, then demons, then the IG. Who essentially blow it all to hell, making it useless to the administratum in the end.

To go a bit further from this? Necromunda serves as an example that provided you provide your tithe, on time every time? Planetary Governors are pretty much left to it.

Yes there are checks and balances, for instance the Adeptus Arbites and Ecclesiarchy. But so long as you cough up, it’s not worth the Administratum’s time to keep order.

Even if there’s a coup against the Governor? So long as it’s not Cultist Activity and purely “internal”, so long as the tithe is forthcoming, nobody particularly cares in the wider scheme of things.

Other stuff is well covered. But I would add various sources point to seemingly standardised Tithing Grades. Look for intro info in supplements to see what I mean.

 Flinty wrote:
Semtexia… good grief. Someone phoned that one in

And their regiments are called - the Semtexian Bombardiers!


And getting back on-topic:

Codex Armageddon wrote:Before the Semtexian Bombardiers were raised on this world, Semtexia was always regarded as a modest mining planet, providing meagre tithes to the Imperium. Its unique export of Kultrinium was useful to the manufacture of weapons on Armageddon, but it is only since Semtexia has started towards producing military units that the world has steadily increased in importance. With regiments to raise, more miners were transported to the planet, providing an exponential increase in the population. With the greater workforce, new ore strains were quickly found that have led to more complex and powerful artillery designs and also to the production of the now legendary Semtexian Sink Mines.

So the native miners are being sent off to the Guard, and off-world miners shipped in...

 Flinty wrote:
Semtexia… good grief. Someone phoned that one in

Not as much as they did with Metallica.

I would assume it's based on what the planet produces an abundance of, and X amount of men.

So a planet rich in stuff that can be turned into promethium would have promethium as it's main tithe, and then founding an arbitrary number of regiments every X years, or whenever things in the sector start getting spicy.

If it's a factory world, then the tithe might be sheets of plasteel, or bullets, or even something like bayonet sheathes.

Some more information on tithes.

The datafile below (spoilered for size) is from the lore section of the 5th edition core rulebook. It describes a fairly typical hive world:


Firstly, there is a standardised tithe grade of Exactis Extremis. This seems fairly high, but no scale has ever been published to my knowledge. I think some forge worlds have a published grade that suggests the maximum so Minea is not a top producer. Elsewhere in the book, Ultramar is given a tithe grade of Aptus Non, this is clearly the tithe exemption afforded to Astartes realms.

We can see that a regular draft of 1,249,000 soldiers are tithed per annum. In comparison to the planetary population, this is low, but the primary exports are raw materials suggesting that Minea is a hybrid hive/mining world. Much of its population presumably toil in the mines with few guard are recruited to maintain the working population.

The following datafile from the same book gives information on drafts from various planets:


Here another hive world, Coronis Agathon, with a population similar to Minea, is more militarised with a larger garrison of 10,000,000 standing soldiers (at least 100 regiments, which would be ~100,000 troopers/regiment at the lower level- consistent with the larger regiments in lore). If the ratio on Minea of standing troops to annual draft is common, Coronis Agathon will recruit ~6,250,000 guardsmen/year. This number may be higher.

The numbers in the key at the bottom of the data file are odd. Firstly, no unit is given, although presumably it refers to the annual individual soldiers drafted, it could be a more abstract numerical representation of recruited strength, with more powerful units like artillery and armour given a higher rating. Assuming the former, many worlds recruit between 5 and 10 million per year, which is a lot of Guard regiments. For some reason there is then a gap with some planets recruiting >50,000,000 per year. I have often wondered if this was a typo and if it was meant to be >10,000,000 per year. That is a population larger than England being shipped off-world every year, so there must be some significant population growth to sustain this. For the hive worlds like Armageddon, Archona, and Morox, this should be easy to sustain.

Civilised worlds like Athonos and Tallarn should also be reasonably sustainable with populations broadly equivalent to modern Earth. Valhalla is listed here as a civilised world, but is typically described as a hive world- due to its icy death-world nature, it may be a hive world with a lower-than-normal population closer to that of civilised worlds.

The most surprising planets at this level are the feral worlds like Attilla and Kaledon and Catachan as a particularly hostile death world. It is surprising that these worlds could sustain a population losing >50,000,000 per year at the expected population densities for feral societies or a planet that requires off-world support to maintain a population where reaching adulthood is uncommon. The primary tithe of these worlds is guardsmen with nothing else of value to the wider Imperium, but it is still impressive. I would personally find it easier to swallow if the tithe was greater than 10 million rather than 50 million, as this gives more leeway in numbers.

The other explanation is that these levels include emergency obligations, and are not sustainable but are in response to local wars. The datafile has a timestamp of 998.M41. Catachan, at least, was involved in raising regiments for the wars against the Waaagh! targeting nearby Ryza and the surrounding area. Its high tithe could include extra emergency troops for these wars.

Minea's troop tithe is low enough to not even feature on the ranges given.

The fortress worlds do not have stated tithe ranges, only the garrison strength, but it is of note that many worlds recruit huge numbers of tithed guardsmen but retain less than 100 regiments in their PDF- soldiers are an enormous export.

Subsectors and sectors keep standing Imperial Guard forces at the ready to respond to threats overwhelming PDFs, so it appears the Departmento Munitorum prefers to have mobile regiments held in local and regional strategic reserves over having strong PDFs- these being enough to drive off pirates and crush local uprisings, but only a speed bump for serious invasions. This probably reduces the risk of rebellions successfully repelling Imperial counterattacks.