Note 53 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Taxation.—No one of the works on administration just cited treats this subject in a comprehensive or satisfactory manner. The only special study of the subject that is known to the writer is Carl C. Plehn’s Taxation in the Philippines (Political Science Quarterly, xvi, pp. 680–711, and xvii, pp. 125–148), and the author of this excellent survey had to drag his data forth from the official records and compilations. This survey gives all the most necessary information as to kinds of taxes, their incidence, and amounts; but for the most part there lie outside of its scope the questions one wishes to have answered as to methods of collection and the working of the fiscal administration in general, the actual receipts and expenditures for government purposes, and particularly the special local revenues so far as separate from general revenues. Sancianco y Goson again helps to fill the gap, as regards the system of taxation prevailing before the abolition of the tobacco monopoly and the reform of the tribute and the corvee in 1884.53 Anyone who has had experience with Spanish fiscal tables need not be told that they do not always show what they appear to show. It is thus that the writers who have reproduced in English since 1898 Philippine budgets for various years54 have unwittingly misled their readers as to the real cost of government under Spain. The figures shown in these budgets were the totals of net collections (and expenditures), for ordinary purposes, for the central government of the islands alone. They did not include the purely local licenses and other taxes, the surcharges on general taxes for local government (to be expended under supervision of the central authorities), the percentages that went to collectors, the other fees forming part or all of the compensation of some judicial and other officials, special surcharges for port works and other purposes not covered in the ordinary budget, etc. Naturally, no estimate was included of the value of the forced-labor levy. The products of “squeeze” and “pickings,” in some cases so fully established as to be notorious, were of course not included; nevertheless, they represented part of the cost of government to the people. Finally, an ecclesiastical establishment, really a part of the government itself, drew support from the people in many ways beyond what would have been provided had not the power of government been behind it, under a system of voluntary contributions, for instance, apart from the communities which paid rent to the friars as landlords.55