Reports of taxes collected from inns, taverns, and billiard parlors in New Orleans
Description
Spanish colonial officials in Louisiana, as the French before them, enacted regulations governing the operation of inns, taverns, and billiard parlors. The rules were to serve the dual purpose of facilitating the government's task of maintaining public order and at the same time raising revenues through the imposition of license taxes. The documents in this section are annual and quarterly reports made by City Steward Juan de Castanedo of such taxes collected in the 1790s. During this period the impost was 30 pesos a year, paid in quarterly installments, for establishments having no billiard table, 40 pesos annually for those with one table, and 60 pesos for those with two. The names of the license holders making payment appear in the documents. It is interesting to note the increase in revenues collected between 1794 (175 pesos per quarter) and 1799 (566 pesos per quarter). The document dated 1798 December 31 was a report of an annual tax collected on checkerboard and billiard tables set up along the levees of the city. [Additional material on the subject is to be found in: Holmes, "O'Reilly's Regulations...," Louisiana History, VI, 293-300; Holmes, "Spanish Regulations of Taverns...," The Spanish in the Mississippi Valley, J.F. McDermott, editor, 149-167.]