Richard Reisch · 1896
Reisch’s work is a legal-administrative commentary and documentary edition. Its scope is the Austrian law of 25 October 1896 on direct personal taxes, together with the related statutes and ordinances that remained in force. The book presents the reform as a decisive break with an older fiscal regime rather than as a mere technical adjustment. Its point of departure is historical: Austria’s direct taxation had long rested on inherited instruments that no longer matched modern economic life.
Durch das Gesetz vom 25. October 1896 gelangten die seit den fünfziger Jahren immer von neuem wiederkehrende Versuche, die direkte Steuergesetzgebung Österreichs von dem längst veralteten Erwerbsteuerpatente aus dem Jahre 1812 und dem nur als eine provisorische Maßnahme gedachten Einkommensteuerpatente aus dem Jahre 1849 zu befreien und einer gründlichen Reform zuzuführen, zum gedeihlichen Abschluß.
English translation: Through the law of 25 October 1896, the attempts, ever recurring since the fifties, to free Austria's direct tax legislation from the long-outdated business-tax patent of 1812 and from the income-tax patent of 1849 (intended merely as a provisional measure) and to lead it to a thorough reform, came to a successful conclusion.
The central thesis is therefore codificatory and administrative at once: the 1896 statute creates a new system of direct personal taxation by replacing provisional, antiquated, and fragmented arrangements with a comprehensive legal order. Reisch reads the law as a whole, attending not only to liabilities and classifications but also to the machinery through which taxable capacity is made knowable. The early articles matter because they define the statute’s relation to the past: older law survives only where expressly preserved or functionally necessary.
In den Artikeln I und II kommt zum Ausdruck, daß der Entwurf nicht eine Novelle zu den bisher bestehenden Gesetzen darstellt, sondern die in ihm behandelten Steuern in erschöpfender Weise regelt (M. B. S. 46).
English translation: In Articles I and II it is expressed that the draft does not constitute an amendment to the hitherto existing laws, but rather regulates in an exhaustive manner the taxes treated in it (M. B. p. 46).
The commentary’s most important conceptual move is its treatment of income and earning power as administrative objects. Reisch emphasizes that the reform refuses simply to continue older methods of taxing according to numerically stated net yield. This is not merely a change of calculation; it is a change in fiscal epistemology. The state must classify, compare, estimate, and verify economic activity without pretending that outward size alone gives direct access to real profitability.
Mit aller Entschiedenheit stand für die Regierung das Eine fest, daß die bisherige Methode der Besteuerung nach dem ziffermäßigen Reinerträge hier zunächst nicht fortgesetzt werden dürfe.
English translation: For the government one thing was firmly established with all decisiveness: that the previous method of taxation according to numerically determined net yield could not, for the time being, be continued here.
Hence the work gives special weight to “objective” signs of business scale while also warning against mechanical inference. The tax authority may use visible features of an enterprise, but Reisch insists that they are only aids to judgment, not substitutes for judgment. The law’s modernity lies precisely in this tension between standardized assessment and individualized evaluation.
Die aufgezählten objectiven Merkmale des Betriebsumfanges sind wichtige Anhaltspunkte, um die mittlere Ertragsfähigkeit der Unternehmungen und Beschäftigungen zu beurtheilen; sie lassen aber noch keinen unmittelbaren Schluß auf die mittlere Ertragsfähigkeit zu, weil der Betriebserfolg bei dem gleichen äußeren Umfange ein verschiedener sein kann.
English translation: The objective indicators of the scale of operations enumerated are important reference points for judging the average earning capacity of enterprises and occupations; they do not, however, permit any immediate inference as to the average earning capacity, because the operational result may differ even with the same outward scale.
The structure of the work follows this practical logic. It explains the statute’s comprehensive character, then turns to the procedures by which tax facts are established: documents, witnesses, experts, information from third parties, and inspections. Reisch’s concern is not only revenue but legality. Administrative knowledge must be procedurally disciplined; an assessment may rely only on evidence gathered under the prescribed safeguards.
Zur Begründung des Erkenntnisses darf nur auf solche Urkunden, Zeugen, Auskunftspersonen, Sachverständige und sonstige Beweismittel hingewiesen werden, bezüglich deren die Anordnungen der vorhergehenden Absätze dieses Paragraphen eingehalten worden sind.
English translation: In justifying the decision, reference may be made only to such documents, witnesses, informants, experts, and other means of evidence with respect to which the provisions of the preceding paragraphs of this section have been observed.
This procedural emphasis gives the book lasting relevance for the history of public law. It shows fiscal modernization as a field in which state power expands, but also becomes bounded by rules of proof, notice, and restraint. Even when the administration enters the sphere of production, it must avoid needless interference and respect business secrecy.
Hiebei ist eine Störung des Betriebes thunlichst zu vermeiden und jedwede Nachforschung nach den im Geschäftsinteresse geheim zu haltenden Besonderheiten der Betriebe- oder Fabrikationsweise zu unterlassen.
English translation: In this, disturbance of operations is to be avoided as far as possible, and any inquiry into the particulars of the operating or manufacturing methods that must be kept secret in the business interest is to be omitted.
Reisch’s commentary thus presents the 1896 law as a foundational moment in Austrian tax administration: a move from patent-era survivals to systematic personal taxation, from crude net-yield taxation to assessed earning capacity, and from discretionary fiscal inquiry to regulated evidentiary procedure. Its relevance lies in showing how a modern tax state was legally constructed—through codification, classification, evidentiary rules, and a careful balancing of fiscal need with the protected sphere of economic activity.
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