Budget structure and tax revenue in the last decades of the imperial province of Goiás

Abstract

Our work examines, based on various documentary sources, the
public finances of Goiás, especially concerning its revenues, budgets, and sources of taxation between c. 1870 and c. 1889. As result of studying Goiás’ finances through its tax system and financial statements from different fiscal years, we will show the tendency of budget imbalance (deficits) and considerable discrepancies between budgeted and actual revenues. Likewise, we will show the difficulties in organizing the province’s tax system, which is based on a limited number of truly significant revenue categories, resulting from the structure of the financial legislation of the Brazilian Empire alongside the specificities of the provincial economy, strongly tied to cattle raising, which led Goiás to be the province with the lowest revenue among brazilian provinces.