Alcabala
The alcabala or alcavala (Spanish pronunciation:
Etymology
According to the
The term is often used in the plural, las alcabalas, also embracing some other related taxes.
Rate and significance
The alcabala was the most important royal tax imposed by the Spanish crown, first imposed in 1342.[11] The other tax of comparable importance was the diezmo, a tithe for the support of the Catholic Church, a substantial portion of which went to the Crown by virtue of agreements with the Holy See.[5]
The rate of the alcabala varied over time, from as low as two percent to as high as fourteen percent.
Unlike a modern
In 1341, the rate of the alcabala was five percent.[citation needed] It was doubled to ten percent in 1491 and reduced back to five percent in 1539. By 1793, in some places in peninsular Spain it had reached fourteen percent; it was reduced that year to seven percent.[1]
It is not entirely clear what these rates meant in practice. It does not appear that the tax was consistently collected in full. For example, it appears the during the reign of Philip II, "small villages often paid as little as three-and-a-half per cent".[7]
Collection
The relatively limited administration of a 15th-century government was ill-prepared to collect a
Sellers were supposed to notify the tax farmer of transactions within two days and pay the tax to the alcabalero within three days after that, again on possible penalty of four times the tax owed. Sellers were allowed to make arrangements to pay a fixed, periodic tax instead of paying on each transaction. Buyers were also supposed to report, as a check on the sellers. If the seller was from outside the area, or was a cleric, priest, local council official or a powerful individual ("hombre poderoso"), the buyer was required to report the transaction in advance, and could be held liable if the seller did not pay the tax.[7]
History
Although the origin of the alcabala is unclear, and it may have dated back to the
While
The alcabala was a trigger for unrest in Quito when it was first imposed there in the 1590s,[4] and for the Quito Revolt of 1765. In the latter case, the viceroy of New Granada, told to increase revenues but apparently without any direct order from Madrid as to the means by which to do so, had given instructions to remove collection of the alcabala and the brandy monopoly from private tax-farmers and to have royal officials collect the tax directly.[14] An increase to six percent in the late 1770s led to violence in the Viceroyalty of New Granada (northern South America) in 1780–1781 and in Arequipa (Southern Peru) in 1780.[4] While these rates of six percent led to violence in the Americas, rates in the Americas were generally lower than in the Spanish mainland.[4] This was the same era in which disputes over taxes were a major factor leading to the American Revolution in what became the United States.[14]
In the late 18th century, the alcabala generated 2.5 million pesos annually in Mexico and 600,000 pesos in Peru.[15][4]
The alcabala was abolished in the Spanish tax reform of 1845.[16]
Another use of the term
The term alcabala also refers to
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g Joaquín Escriche, Diccionario razonado de legislacion y jurisprudencia, Volume 1, Third Edition, Viuda e hijos de A. Calleja, 1847. Entry "Alcabala", pp. 143–149. Available online at Google Books.
- ^ Alcabala, totocultura.com. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
- .
- ^ .
- ^ .
- ^ "ALVA, or Alba, FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDO, Duke Of", Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911.
- ^ a b c d e John Edwards, Christian Córdoba: The city and its region in the late Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1981. p. 69. Available online at http://libro.uca.edu. TOC, relevant portion. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ a b alcabala, DRAE online. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ a b Older editions of the DRAE are searchable online through http://rae.es, but there is no way to create permanent links to the results.
- ^ Juli Peradejordi Sobre el Nombre y el Prólogo del Quijote Archived 6 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, citing Safran: La Cábala, ed. Martínez Roca, Barcelona 1980.
- ^ John Jay TePaske, "Alcabalas" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, p. 44. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
- H. Butler Clarke, "The Catholic Kings" p.347–383 in A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes (eds.), The Cambridge Modern History. Volume I: The Renaissance (1902), Macmillan Company, 1912, p. 356. Available online at Google Books.
- ^ Gabriel de Usera, Legislación de Hacienda Española, Fifth Edition, 1952, Madrid: Aguilar. pp. 293–294.
- ^ .
- ^ TePaske, "Alcabalas" p. 44.
- ^ Enrique Ossorio Crespo, Así Era... La Alcabalda Archived 25 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine, La Ventana de la Agencia (Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency), p. 12, issue number not identified, PDF dated 2005-06-27. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ Mike Kline. "Venezuela Information: Elizabeth Kline's Guide to Camps, Posadas & Cabins in Venezuela". Archived from the original on 22 October 2009.