TAXATION
SAFFRON PICKERS SORTING THEIR CROP.
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CHAPTER XV
TAXATION
Among the sources of the national revenue of Spain there are several which more especially affect the poorer portion of the community, or, by hampering trade and manufactures, put obstacles in the way of the national prosperity. Among these may be especially mentioned the Customs duties, the tax on trades, business, and professions (contribucion industrial) the octroi, or consumo, the creation and sale of monopolies, and the national lottery. The total taxation of the country is absolutely crushing, and makes Spain one of the dearest places of residence in Europe.
The Customs are excessively high, especially for a country that has comparatively few manufactures of its own to protect. To take a few instances at random from the Tariff: Straw hats pay about 20 pesetas per kilogramme; preserves, 3 pesetas per kilogramme; typewriters, 8 pesetas per kilogramme; timber in boards, 6 pesetas per cubic metre; materials of silk and velvet, from 30 pesetas per kilogramme; woollen materials, from 13 pesetas per kilogramme; drugs at various rates from 36 pesetas per kilogramme downwards, and so forth. The consequence is seen in the prices charged in the shops for ordinary commodities. Thus Danish tinned butter costs pesetas 2.75 per lb.; tapioca, 1 peseta per packet of about ¼ lb.; coffee, pesetas 2.50 to 3 per lb.; Keiller’s marmalade, 3 to 4 pesetas the 1 lb. pot; Burroughs & Welcome’s tabloids, pesetas 2.50 the small bottle of 25; and most other things in about the same proportion.[24] The Customs receipts form, with the exception of the tax on real estate, the largest single item in the Budget. For the year 1909 they were estimated at pesetas 153,600,000 (£6,144,000).
The Contribucion industrial is a tax upon every imaginable trade, profession, and industry that can be exercised: on merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, professional men of all sorts, on means of transit, on public entertainments, on schools, newspapers—in short, it is almost impossible to find any kind of business or occupation that is not taxed.
The amount of the tax varies with the population, a scale of ten different rates being drawn up according to the size of the town. Bankers pay from about £300 a year downwards, according to the place of residence; merchants from £200; shopkeepers from £70; hotels from £60; contractors 6 per mil. on their contracts; railways £10 per kilometre constructed, and a tax on their receipts; brokers from £80; newspapers from £35; publishers from £25; private schools from £10; and so on. It is tedious and unnecessary to accumulate instances.[25]