Robin Hood stole the tributes from tax collectors and returned it to the peasants who paid the taxes. Although it's a fiction, it indicates Robin Hood acted fairly by returning to the people what was rightfully theirs, as he wasn't stealing indiscriminately from English citizens. Moreover, the peasants didn't want to have anything to do with the local government anymore, because they moved themselves to the forest to live there freely from the Sheriff of Nottingham's law.

It means they stopped using any services the government could provide. So the government couldn't give a reason to force them paying abusive taxes anymore.