Historiography and tax farmers in 18th-century Spain

One outstanding aspect of the relationship between the public and private spheres in fiscal history is tax farming the practice whereby a person or company undertook to collect the royal taxes. This practice provided the monarch with a guaranteed income; it also constituted a loan. The counterpart was the expectation of substantial profits for the farmer. Eighteenth-century Spain followed the English example in eliminating tax farming, unlike France, where tax farming continued for most of the eighteenth century. The article reviews the assessment of the importance and reasons for tax farming in the historiography, with particular attention to the process whereby Spanish tax farming was finally suppressed in 1749.