Richard Reisch, Die Reform der directen Personalsteuern in Österreich (1897)

Richard Reisch’s journal article in three installments examines Austria’s reform of direct personal taxation through its fiscal constraints, definitions of taxable capacity, and distributional consequences. Its central problem is how to redistribute tax burdens without either increasing state revenue or impairing the treasury. Reisch identifies this constraint as the government proposal’s governing principle, while noting its initially limited duration:

Die Steuerreform soll für den Staat kein Mehrerträgnis liefern, darf für denselben aber auch keinen Ausfall zur Folge haben, das war der in der Regierungsvorlage — allerdings mit einer engen zeitlichen Begrenzung — klar ausgesprochene Grundgedanke.

English translation: The tax reform should yield no additional revenue for the state, but must not entail any loss for it either: this was the fundamental principle clearly expressed in the government proposal—albeit with a narrow time limit.

Revenue neutrality makes the reform a question of allocation rather than simply extraction. Reisch’s analysis moves between the legal construction of tax liabilities and their effects on taxpayers and public finance. The distinction matters: a reform can preserve aggregate receipts while changing both the distribution of burdens and the state’s capacity to meet future expenditure.

A central conceptual move is to locate ability to pay in an economic unit rather than assume that each legal individual constitutes an independent taxable subject. Marriage becomes decisive because it reorganizes that unit:

Auf diese Weise begründet die Ehe eine neue wirtschaftliche Einheit, welche allein die Grundlage für die Beurtheilung der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit bilden kann.

English translation: In this way marriage establishes a new economic unit, which alone can form the basis for assessing economic capacity.

The household thus supplies a basis for assessing taxable capacity. Alongside this treatment of the tax-bearing unit, Reisch distinguishes the economic substance of business income from its accounting presentation:

Was nicht Reinertrag der Unternehmung ist, kommt nicht zur Besteuerung, auch wenn es in den bilanzmässigen Ueberschüssen enthalten ist.

English translation: Whatever is not the enterprise’s net yield is not subject to taxation, even if it is included in the surpluses shown in the balance sheet.

This distinction prevents a balance-sheet surplus from functioning automatically as the measure of taxable yield. Together, the household argument and the treatment of enterprise income show how much turns on the definition of the tax base: neither formal individuality nor recorded surplus settles the question of economic capacity.

The article also addresses enforcement and relief. Reisch specifies that both tax offences under discussion require an intention to reduce tax liability, making intent a constituent of the offence. At the distributional level, he concludes that taxpayers exempt from the income tax because their income does not exceed 600 florins experience only a reduction in their tax burdens. These details connect the reform’s general principles to the boundaries of liability, punishment, and exemption.

Yet relief and revenue stability do not exhaust Reisch’s assessment. He criticizes the loss of fiscal elasticity associated with the arrangements he examines:

Hiedurch wird unserem Budget einer der wenigen elastischen Factoren entzogen, welche es bisher aufzuweisen hatte, und der Staat zur Deckung aller seiner etwaigen Mehrerfordernisse auf die indirecte Besteuerung verwiesen — was socialpolitisch gewiss nicht erwünscht erscheint.

English translation: This deprives our budget of one of the few elastic factors it has hitherto possessed, and directs the state toward indirect taxation to cover any additional requirements it may have—something that certainly appears undesirable from a social-policy standpoint.

The concluding tension is therefore between present redistribution and future financing. A settlement that limits direct-tax revenue may provide immediate relief while pushing subsequent fiscal demands toward indirect taxation. Reisch’s contribution lies in assessing tax reform simultaneously as a legal definition of economic capacity, a redistribution of existing burdens, and a constraint on future budgetary choices. His social-policy criticism makes the last dimension integral to judging the reform, rather than a secondary concern.