The profitability of the American colonies depended on an organized public treasury that efficiently channeled the income received from taxes into the coffers of the crown. Since the American possessions were the heritage of the Spanish monarchy, they were called real estate or real estate. It had different types of heritage; the one that belonged to the king, the Crown and the prosecutor.
Organization of the Royal Treasury
Although the colonial fiscal policy was in the hands of the king and the Council of the Indies, in Peru public finances were administered by the viceroys until 1607. They were prerogatives of the viceroy and the counters of the court to give hacienda ordinances, request extraordinary donations, lease the royal monopolies, take care of the shipments of silver to the peninsula, appoint provisional officials, demand accounts from the royal officials and intervene in the affairs of the royal boxes.
In turn, the royal officials were the ones who administered each of the royal boxes distributed throughout the territory and it was the royal treasury of Lima that centralized the fiscal resources of the entire viceroyalty.
Fiscal Structure of the Public Treasury
The income of the central bank of Lima had to cover the expenses of the colonial administration and the remainder had to be sent to Spain, a sum that initially was thirty to fifty percent of the revenues of the Peruvian public treasury. But as the needs and internal expenses of the viceroyalty increased, remittances decreased, to the point of becoming only five percent at the end of the seventeenth century.
