Tax state principle
The tax state principle is a term from the constitutional discussion in Germany, which is intended to clarify the special importance of taxes for the state revenue generation.
The terms tax state or tax state principle are not used by the Basic Law (GG) itself. As the legal basis of the tax state, the financial constitutional competence provisions of Art. 105 ff. GG are mainly used. From these articles it is concluded that taxes are regarded by the Basic Law as the rule type of the burden of money.
The Federal Constitutional Court , in particular, has consistently ruled on this principle. A decision from 1995 states:
“The financial constitution is based on the idea that the financing of state tasks in the federal and state levels, including the municipalities, comes primarily from the income from the sources of income regulated in Article 105 ff. GG. However, various types of non-tax levies are not excluded; the financial constitution of the Basic Law does not contain a final canon of permissible tax types [...] "
In the financial and constitutional debate it is controversial which conclusions can be drawn from the tax state principle on the permissibility of non-tax levies . At least at the federal and state level, most of the state's income is generated through taxes.
The counter model for the tax state is the fee state . According to the principle of equivalence , in the “fee state” everyone only pays for the services they use - provided they can pay for them. There is no social compensation through tax progression. ”One example is tuition fees. In a fee state, those who study pays tuition fees. And only those who pay tuition fees or whose tuition fees are being paid are studying. There are practical reasons why states finance themselves mainly through taxes and not through fees (hence the tax state). On the one hand, it is unrealistic to finance the state's financial needs predominantly through fees, since many state functions serve community tasks that do not have services that can be individually allocated to individual citizens. On the other hand, taxes not only serve purely fiscal purposes, but also have a social function ( performance principle ).
The term “tax state” was popularized by Joseph Schumpeter far beyond the financial scientific discussion and advertised as the most progressive model both against previous fiscal variants such as the feudal state and against alternatives such as socialist and state capitalist forms of public financing. The political idea of the tax state in the sense of Schumpeter stands in the tradition of liberalist state finance thinking, in which the tax is propagated as a fiscal medium protecting private property and an institute of free-market integrated free societies that defends against arbitrary state intervention. In this sense, Schumpeter's 1918 text was intended as a socially-theoretically inspired polemic against radical redistribution and outmoded political authority.
literature
- Josef Isensee : Tax state as a form of government. In: Rolf Stödter (Ed.): Hamburg, Germany, Europe - Contributions to German and European constitutional, administrative and commercial law; Festschrift for Hans Peter Ipsen on his seventieth birthday. Tübingen 1977, p. 409 ff.
- Werner Heun : The development of the tax state concept in theory and in fact. In: Ute Sacksofsky, Joachim Wieland (Ed.): From the tax state to the fee state. Baden-Baden 2000, p. 10 ff.
- Sebastian Huhnholz: What do you mean: “tax state”? In: Werner Nienhüser, Ute Schmiel (Ed.): Yearbook 29 Economy and Society: Taxes and Society. Marburg 2017, pp. 15–48.
- Sebastian Huhnholz: The tax of the tax state . In: Verena Frick , Oliver W. Lembcke , Roland Lhotta (Eds.): Politics and Law. Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2017, pp. 453–472.
- Ute Sacksofsky : Environmental protection through non-tax levies. Tübingen 2000, plus Habil. Bielefeld 1998/1999.
- Mike Wienbracke: Assessment Limits for the Administrative Fee . At the same time a contribution to the tax state principle and the cost recovery principle, taking into account European law. Berlin 2004 (also dissertation Bochum).
Individual evidence
- ↑ BVerfGE 93, 319 (342) - water penny.
- ↑ Principle of the tax state; see. inter alia BVerfGE 78, 249 (266) f .; BVerfGE 82, 159 (178) .
- ^ A b Heinrich Weber-Grellet : Taxes in the modern constitutional state. Dr. Otto Schmidt, 2001, ISBN 978-3504200756 , page 5
- ↑ Wolfgang Lieb: nachdenkseiten.de
- ↑ Sebastian Huhnholz: Refeudalization of the tax state? Preliminary considerations for a political theory of tax democracy . In: Sigrid Boysen et al. (Ed.): Constitution and Distribution. Contributions to a basic question of the understanding of the constitution . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2015, p. 175-216 .
