Moriz Dub · 1908
Published in Vienna under the signature Dr. M. Dub and attributed here to Moriz (Moritz) Dub on contextual evidence, this tax-policy pamphlet examines Austria’s proposed building-tax reform from the perspectives of property owners, tenants, industry, and public finance. Dub supports reform but questions whether delayed, conditional relief can stimulate construction sufficiently to restrain rents. His exposition moves from the existing system through projected tax reductions, exemptions for new buildings, provincial and municipal surcharges, and factory taxation, before explaining assessment procedures and rural house taxes. The conclusion returns these technical provisions to their social purpose: improving housing conditions without sacrificing fiscal stability.
Dub begins with a forceful comparative claim:
Die österreichische Hauszinssteuer ist die höchste in ganz Europa.
English translation: The Austrian house-rent tax is the highest in all Europe.
His concern is the cumulative burden of state taxation and local surcharges, rather than the statutory state rate alone. Distinguishing gross rent, allowable expenses, taxable rent, and effective payments, he shows why apparently substantial relief can leave owners heavily burdened. The proposal recodifies the law while retaining its urban–rural division: urban rental taxation becomes the Ortszinssteuer, the narrower Hauszinssteuer covers rented rural houses, and the Hausklassensteuer continues to classify other rural dwellings by their rooms.
The financial plan exposes the limits of the government’s generosity. Existing urban receipts remain protected; only part of future revenue growth finances reductions. Three-sevenths of the surplus would support relief, with four-sevenths retained by the treasury. Reductions would begin in 1912, although the law was intended to take effect in 1910. Dub argues for an earlier start and identifies uncertainty as an obstacle to capitalization:
Die versprochene Steuerermäßigung ist keine fixe, sondern eine variable und schwankende.
English translation: The promised tax reduction is not fixed, but variable and fluctuating.
A guaranteed saving could immediately increase a building’s capital value. A contingent saving cannot reliably command a higher selling price. Dub therefore expects the scheme to encourage owners to retain their properties more readily than it encourages construction for resale. His analysis separates benefits to continuing owners from incentives operating in the property market.
The more promising innovation replaces twelve years of partial exemption with six years free of state building taxes and associated surcharges, followed immediately by reduced rates. Through discounted-value calculations, Dub argues that the shorter exemption can be worth more. Its institutional mechanism is the abolition of the fictitious state assessment on which provincial and municipal surcharges rested. Yet this threatens local revenues and creates the proposal’s principal political obstacle. After exemption ends, local authorities may also raise surcharge percentages to preserve receipts, limiting the practical reach of state relief.
For tenants, Dub rejects any automatic passage from lower taxes to lower rents. Proposals to transfer savings directly to tenants cannot reliably determine future rental prices. The decisive connection is instead between taxation, investment, and housing supply:
Mit anderen Worten: Die Frage des Mietzinses ist eine Frage der Bautätigkeit.
English translation: In other words: the question of rent is a question of building activity.
This supply argument remains qualified. Vienna’s rents had risen despite construction because demand increased faster. Dub therefore regards stabilization, rather than a substantial reduction in existing rents, as the realistic objective. Public resistance to rent increases after tax relief might reinforce the effect of additional housing.
The later sections reveal how unevenly reform distributes its gains. A capital-value-based factory tax promises greater consistency between urban and rural industry, but newly taxable rural factories would also incur local surcharges. Small workshops inside residential buildings remain disadvantaged. Dub welcomes clearer deductions, improved treatment of vacancies, and assessment commissions combining official and lay participation, including owners and tenants. Administrative modernization nevertheless accompanies stronger evidentiary powers.
His sharpest distributive criticism concerns rural dwellings: the smallest houses receive immediate exemption from state tax, while urban owners await uncertain future savings. He treats this contrast as evidence of agrarian political preference, without opposing relief itself. The concluding argument links building-tax reform to provincial finance and broader budgetary compromise. The pamphlet’s significance lies in showing that housing taxation is simultaneously a problem of investment incentives, fiscal coordination, and social policy: nominal reductions matter only if their timing, distribution, and interaction with local levies produce a durable improvement in housing conditions.
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