Sales stamp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The sales stamp is the immediate forerunner of the Reich sales tax from 1918. This is the first modern form of a general consumption tax and the original form of sales tax in the German Reich.

The financial hardship of the German Reich in the First World War can be seen as the trigger for the proposal for a receipt tax. Because the German Reich entered the war without a conclusive financial plan, an attempt was initially made to cover the costs with war loans, which, as in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 , were to be paid by the defeated enemy. After hopes of a quick end to the war were dashed, the Reichstag was faced with a budget deficit of around 500 million marks in 1916. For this reason, on June 13, 1916, the Reich Government submitted a so-called war tax bill consisting of five draft laws to the Reichstag. One of these templates provided for the introduction of a receipt stamp. This proposal was heavily criticized both in the Reichstag and by the press. Due to numerous detailed questions, the advice on this receipt tax draft was referred to a special commission for the revision of the bill.

This commission began its work on April 12, 1916, and right at the beginning of the deliberations, motion No. 19 (sales stamp) was brought in by the representative of the Center Party, Richard Müller from Fulda . This application was a draft law in which the commercial sales of goods from 3000 Marks should be subject to a tax of 0.1 percent. This idea of ​​a sales-related tax was conveyed by the Berlin department store owner Oscar Tietz , whose department stores were later to bear the name Hertie after the company was Aryanized during the Nazi dictatorship , who assessed the profitability of such a tax based on his experience with municipal department store taxes knew.

The new draft of a sales stamp took the place of the draft of a receipt stamp in the Commission's first negotiation. Against the votes of the Social Democratic MPs and with some changes, the majority of the commission recommended the draft to the Reichstag for adoption. In the Reichstag, too, the members of the SPD opposed the adoption of the sales stamp as a general consumption tax, since such a tax is not based on the efficiency principle and thus burdens the poorer population proportionally more than direct taxes, which were proposed in return.

At the second reading of the draft law, Dr. Johannes Popitz , who was later to have a decisive influence on sales taxation as a consultant in the Reich Treasury as the creator of the Reich sales tax.

The law was passed in the Reichstag on June 5, 1916, personally signed by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Grand Headquarters in Spa (Belgium) on behalf of the Reich, and came into force on October 1, 1916.

The sales stamp was added to tariff number 10 and §§ 76 ff. Of the Reichsstempelgesetz. In terms of its system, it regulates two taxes: on the one hand, the so-called sales stamp on domestic deliveries of goods that exceed an annual turnover of 3000 marks and, on the other hand, the receipt stamp on non-commercial deliveries of goods from private sources worth over 100 marks. The taxpayer was the recipient of the payments for both types of tax. The tax object and thus the point of contact were sales of goods in the form of paid deliveries of goods. The sales stamp was based on the trader's annual list of the goods delivered. For the receipt stamp it was the value of the goods stated on the confirmation of receipt (receipt).

In addition to implementing provisions, the Federal Council has also adopted interpretative principles to give traders advice on how to handle the new tax.

In the last year of the war, the realm's financial reserves were almost completely used up. The Reich government therefore introduced a comprehensive tax reform of 11 tax proposals into the Reichstag on April 20, 1918. This also included the draft of a Reich sales tax that came into force on August 1, 1918. The sales stamp had therefore only existed for 22 months. The total income amounted to around 225 million marks.

swell

  • Houses: Outline of the historical development of public finance , in: Handbuch der Finanzwissenschaften, Volume I, 3rd edition 1977, p. 50 ff.
  • Negotiations of the Reichstag , Volume 318, Printed matter 321.
  • Jacobs: In the beginning there was the sales stamp from 1916 , DStZ 2006, pp. 654–660.