Housing tax

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Reference to the housing tax on the Lindenhof built between 1924 and 1925

The housing tax was an indirect but highly progressive tax that went back to the initiative of Robert Danneberg and Hugo Breitner . It was levied by the city of Vienna in the interwar period and was used to finance municipal housing in " Red Vienna ". It was the best known of the highly controversial Breitner taxes .

requirements

In the last years of the Danube Monarchy , there was a boom in private apartment buildings in Vienna due to strong population growth . However, high rents had to be paid for these Wilhelminian-style rental apartments, and there were strong fluctuations in the population due to a lack of tenant protection . With the outbreak of the war in 1914, this building boom broke down, and at the same time the housing shortage increased dramatically due to the high number of refugees, especially from Galicia . Under the pressure of the war, the government was forced to intervene to an increasing extent dirigistically in order to strengthen social cohesion and to contain discontent. In 1917, tenant protection was also established by the then conservative government. This widely popular wartime economic measure continued even after the end of the First World War and, in connection with the war and post-war inflation and the numerical linkage of rents to the so-called peace rate, led to a drastic reduction in the cost of housing for tenants. However, this also corresponded to the establishment of protected rent as a property-like right and the de facto expropriation of the homeowners. Under these circumstances, the private construction of rental apartments sank to practically zero.

Financing the superblocks

Reference to the housing tax at Anton-Schrammel-Hof in Simmering
Plaque at Svoboda-Hof with reference to the housing tax and naming of Karl Seitz , Hugo Breitner , Franz Siegel and Anton Weber

While the settlement movement was at the fore of local interest immediately after the World War , in the early 1920s there was a change of direction in the new social democratic local government. Now the construction of large residential complexes was favored, and with the municipal council resolution of January 20, 1923 on the introduction of a special purpose housing tax, their main source of financing was created. The housing tax burdened all rental properties, albeit staggered so that small apartments were charged with 2 percent of the pre-war rent and even luxury apartments with just over 36 percent of the pre-war rent. However, the most expensive 0.5 percent of the properties provided 45 percent of the total output.

The housing tax became the best known of the 18 so-called Breitner taxes, indirect taxes, which were aimed primarily at luxury consumption (cars, horses, domestic staff, visits to entertainment venues, etc.).

In 1927, Breitner's “taxes on luxury and special expenses” accounted for almost 65 million schillings; this corresponded to about 36 percent of Vienna's tax income and 20 percent of the city's total income.

Inflation and tenant protection had practically expropriated the previous class of landlords - often traders. Under these circumstances, commercial rental housing construction was out of the question. This led to the stepping in of the community, whose construction activity must also be seen as a functional equivalent of the non-existent private construction activity. In the short term, it benefited from the drop in property prices, which enabled the municipality of Vienna to acquire large property reserves with relatively little effort, such as the so-called “Drasche Belt” in the south of the city, which stretched from Meidling to Kaiserebersdorf , or the “Frankl -Reasons". By 1922, the property of the municipality of Vienna had increased from 5487 ha to 57,670 ha, and at the beginning of 1924 the city was already the largest landowner and had 2.6 million square meters of building land.

On the newly erected superblocks - the first was the Fuchsenfeldhof - the notes “Built with the funds of the housing tax” were always attached. With the onset of the global economic crisis , the increasing curtailment of Vienna's tax sovereignty in the financial equalization of the Tax Sharing Act and the political changes of the 1930s, this housing finance system came up against its political and economic limits.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ According to Felix Czeike : History of the City of Vienna , Vienna 1981, p. 273
  2. ^ According to dasrotewien web lexicon, keyword municipal housing (here as a web link)
  3. ↑ Dasrotewien web dictionary, ibid

literature

  • Alfred Georg Frei, Anton Pelinka: The labor movement and the "grass roots" using the example of Viennese housing policy 1919-1934 , Braumüller Verlag, Vienna 1991
  • Hans Hautmann, Rudolf Hautmann: The municipal housing of the Red Vienna , Schönbrunn Verlag, Vienna 1980.
  • Albert Lichtblau : Viennese housing policy 1892-1919 , publisher for social criticism , Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-900351-33-3 .
  • Helmut Weihsmann: The Red Vienna. Social democratic architecture and local politics 1919-34 . 1985, ISBN 3-85371-181-2 .
  • Erich Bramhas: The Wiener Gemeindebau: From Karl-Marx-Hof to Hundertwasserhaus , Birkhäuser, Basel 1987, ISBN 3-7643-1797-3 .

Web link