Study Sanhedrin folio 26A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And everyone would hide. When the head tax collector would arrive, R' Zeira’s father would say to him: From whom shall I request taxes? The city is scarcely populated, and only a small sum of taxes should be imposed on it.
When he was dying, he said to those standing around his deathbed: Take 13 ma’a that are tied up in my sheet and return them to so-and-so, as I took them from him but I did not need them to pay the tax. Evidently, some tax collectors are God-fearing, and should not be disqualified.
§ The Mishnah teaches that R' Shimon said: Initially people would call them: Gatherers of the produce of the Sabbatical Year. Once the tax collectors grew abundant they would then call them: Merchants who trade in the produce of the Sabbatical Year.
The Talmud asks: What is he saying? What is R' Shimon teaching in this statement? Rav Yehuda says this is what he is saying: Initially the rabbis would say that gatherers of the produce of the Sabbatical Year, i.e., those who gather a large quantity of produce of the Sabbatical Year for themselves,
Once those who would offer money to the poor to gather produce for them grew abundant, and the poor would go and gather the produce for those who hired them and bring it to them, then gathering a large amount of produce of the Sabbatical Year was considered a business. The rabbis then said that both