Proceso recaudatorio y mecanismos fiscales en los concejos de la Corona de Castilla

Abstract

During the last twenty years, the world of taxes has been considered under different points of view. It takes from the type of tax, through the monograph on some of them, their study in councils, to the tax system as a constitutive element of modern States. Theree is, nevertheless, a point that has not been much studied, even nowadays: the mechanisms applied by municipal councils to help royal requestes for direct taxes being effective. The organisation was based on a fiscal unity called by different names such as: «canama, postería, entregueria, percheria» (tax, contribution, salt tax or gabelle, tallage or taille, etc.). To apply this procedure, a series of lists were established. First of all, the possessions, the amount to which a rate was applied for the possessions of the neighbours to make them equivalent to the tax system unity. Therefor, that unity was to be modified, internally divided to appreciate better the evaluations of patrimony groups. By the end of this inventory, a verification was made and the final number of fiscal unities was then determined. On this base, any tax request could be done, generating a third list, the so-called assessment. On this last base, the tax collector was able to do his work. The whole process generated a wide document typology that was meant to make public the taxes granted to the Spanish Parliament: safe-conduct for renting, safe-conduct for levying, their reflections in the Agreement Books, warrants, lists, patents, letters of payment, of settlement, etc. Once we have analyzed the tax process from a deductive point of view, we could examine it according to an inductive method. This could done through the amounts written down in the assessment lists. The results obtained open new horizons that allow us to deepen in the last mechanisms of collection and, inferring, to discover the tax system sociology.