ABSTRACT
Indirect taxation is the most difficult aspect to analyse, due to the impossibility of dating the introduction of assets, the plurality of taxes and their continuous transformations. While the taxes linked to the land registry were paid only by those registered on the rolls, the gabelle were levied primarily on consumption. In the first half of the fifteenth century, the demand for direct taxes, which only concerned the contadi, increased. In addition to the estimo, “public” debt, i.e. loans obtained by city governments, is one of the most studied topics. All cities got into debt: however, the ability to maintain an organised “public debt’”, paying interest to subscribers, in the thirteenth century only in Genoa and Venice, in the fourteenth century also in the major Tuscan communes and in the fifteenth century as a more general trend, was based on the availability of adequate and stable means of tax revenue.
