the tax laws that were nominally in force in the period following the winning of independence.
The tobacco tax under the republic went into the national treasury. Stamp taxes were continued, alcabalas remained one of the most important—in some years far the most important—source of revenue. Bullion and pulque taxes were kept up. In general, the old Spanish system was continued, as was to be expected.[1]
A review of the measures adopted to increase the public revenue in the next half century of Mexican history reveals no policy. There were numerous tariffs, some of which declared for developing local industry. Some progress was made in doing so in a few lines. There were scattered efforts to reduce, and later to abolish, the alcabala taxes but revolutions overturned all efforts for financial reform and made revenue of the highest importance at the same time that they made it harder to secure. This, of course, was at the bottom of the repeated default on foreign loan interest payments, already noted, and the reason why independence seemed to outsiders so fruitless of economic and cultural advance.
In fact, the struggle for a sufficient income to pay the foreign debt service and leave a working balance
- ↑ A discussion of the tax system under Spain and in the early years of independence is found in Memoria de hacienda y crédito público. . . 1 de Julio de 1910 a 30 de Junio de 1911, Mexico, 1912, p. 210 et seq. See also W. F. McCaleb, The Public Finances of Mexico, New York, 1921, the most detailed review of this field in English.
