Unpayment
The Ungeld (also Umgeld , Ohmgeld ) was one since the 13th century raised excise duty . Etymologically, the term comes from MHG. Ungelt of gelt "payment, delivery" and un- , which was also used reinforcing (see. "Plethora").
Character and distribution
Ungeld was a kind of sales tax that had been levied by the imperial cities on everyday goods since the 13th century , in particular on grain, wine, beer, meat and salt. The tax was collected in the markets and at the city gates.
Ungeld has been taken over by the sovereigns since the 16th century , initially only as a levy on the bar. The level and type of taxation varied, and even in the same territory the tax was not levied everywhere. In 1549 the Electoral Palatinate stipulated that in future all innkeepers and wine taverns owed one pfennig of ungeld of every measure (1575 in Heilbronn about 1.4 liters) of wine or beer. Nowhere in the Palatinate was the drink allowed to be stored without the knowledge of the Ungelter , the collection officers. They checked the barrels and settled monthly accounts with the hosts. The money came in a box with different locks that only the Ungelter and the ruler's tax officials could open together. Originally drinks tax, the Ungeld was extended to other goods. There were as yet no precisely defined boundaries between the rights of the sovereign and those of the local lord, which is why the local lord occasionally claimed a share of the ungeld.
Ungeld, the excise duty first in Spain and Venice and since the 13th century on the Lower Rhine, is the oldest European indirect tax .
See also
- Control Mr (formerly Ungeldherr)
- List of no longer levied tax types
literature
- Karl Kollnig (edit.): The wisdom of the Zenten Eberbach and Mosbach . Stuttgart 1985 (Badische Weistümer and Village Regulations 4).
- Karl Wagner: Ungeld in the Swabian cities bit into the second half of the fourteenth century . Dissertation, Uni Marburg, 1908 ( full text on Archive.org )
- Theodor Knapp: New contributions to the legal and economic history of the Württemberg peasant class . Vol. 1 (illustration), Tübingen 1919.