Notas sobre el arrendamiento de la alcabala a través de los Cuadernos de 1462 y 1484

Abstract

I have tried in this work to study the fiscal management of the Royal Finances during the second half of the XVth century through its most significative tax: tax on sales. Therefor, I confronted the two most systematized Tax on Sales Registers during that century, one of 1462 redacted during the reign of Enrique IV and one of 1484, redacted during the reign of the Catholic Kings. Through those texts, we can deduct how the tax on sales was presented, from a juridical point of view, as an indirect tax, since the Royal Finances collected tributary amounts of money from people who wrere in fact not the ones that the law mentioned, which is, through the renting system. This allows us to clarify a double qualification of the financial power: The King, active subject of the tax system. The Farmer, active subject of the tributary re­lation. The relation established between both is regulated by the Spanish Parliament through Tax on Sales Registers (which brings me to realize a short comparative study of each of them). Though the system supposed clearly a loss for the King in his tributary manage­ment of taxes, it articulates nevertheless all the measures that woud allow him to make profitable, as far as economic interests are concerned, the loss of this adminis­trative capacity in managing the tax on sales collection. They were articulated all around what I would call «the previous valorization of the cost of revenues», which is in fact the key line of the article.