Fire service fee

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fire brigade tax was a municipal tax that male adults in some German federal states had to pay if they were not part of the volunteer fire brigade . This tax was mainly collected in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg as well as in Thuringia and Saxony . Cities with a professional fire brigade were not allowed to raise the tax.

In 1994 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Baden-Württemberg fire brigade tax Article 14 (general prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 4 Paragraph 3 letter d (prohibition of forced or compulsory labor) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) violated. Unequal treatment on the basis of gender cannot be justified.

After the judgment was passed, it was feared that one of the main pillars of funding for the volunteer fire brigade would collapse. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled the Bavarian and Baden-Württemberg fire brigade tax unconstitutional in a judgment of January 24, 1995. The fire service charge violates the principle of equal treatment of men and women. In addition, fire fighting is in the general interest, for which only general taxes are to be used.

history

In the past, residents of localities had to deal with compulsory financial participation to ensure fire protection in the form of conditions. Orders under Palatine Count Karl IV from 1772 served to prevent a fire and to stockpile and use fire buckets . It was strictly ensured that every landlord always had a tub filled with water ready and a leather fire bucket with a name on hand. Each municipality had to keep a certain number of buckets in stock. No resident was allowed to marry or be accepted as a subject who had not supplied the community buckets with a new one with the year and name.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Keyword “fire brigade tax” in the Gabler business dictionary
  2. ↑ Municipalities / fire department tax. Own Art . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1970 ( online - January 12, 1970 , “Konstanz calculated the cost of 18,000 marks to collect 40,000” ).
  3. ↑ ECHR, ECHR, judgment of July 18, 1994 - 12/1193/407/486, NVwZ 1995, 365
  4. ^ Frank Siering: Voluntary Fire Brigade: Totally burned down. After the compulsory levy no longer applies, the extinguishing units are threatened with financial chaos. In: Focus 31/1994. August 1, 1994, accessed October 27, 2014 .
  5. ↑ BVerfG 1 BvL 18/93 and 5, 6, 7/94, 1 BvR 403, 569/94
  6. ^ Franz-Josef Sehr : The fire extinguishing system in Obertiefenbach from earlier times . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 1994 . The district committee of the Limburg-Weilburg district, Limburg-Weilburg 1993, p. 151-153 .