Richard Reisch: Interventions on Building-Tax Reform

Published in 1904, this document records Richard Reisch’s interventions in the eighth session of the building-tax reform inquiry, held on 30 November 1903. Its four brief contributions move from a factual correction concerning Lemberg’s tax surcharges to a conceptual rebuttal of the claim that the house-rent tax necessarily generates an endless cycle of tax and rent increases.

Reisch first challenges the premise of rising surcharges through a local comparison:

Sie betrugen in Lemberg im Jahre 1889 schon 69 Prozent und betrugen im Jahre 1900 nur 68 Prozent.

English translation: In Lemberg they already amounted to 69 percent in 1889 and amounted to only 68 percent in 1900.

He clarifies that he means provincial and municipal surcharges generally, then states that surcharges on the house-rent tax have not increased during the preceding ten years. These distinctions matter: a high existing burden does not itself demonstrate an increasing burden, and different categories of surcharge must not be conflated.

The longer final intervention addresses an expert’s contention that higher taxes require higher rents, which then produce still higher taxes. Reisch shifts the issue from a supposed defect peculiar to housing taxation to the general definition of taxable yield:

Nun möchte ich mir die Bemerkung erlauben, daß das gar keine Besonderheit der Hauszinssteuer, sondern jeder Ertragssteuer eigentümlich ist, weil ja bei jeder Ertragssteuer das Prinzip gilt, daß der Ertrag nicht vorweg um die für diesen Ertrag zu zahlende Steuer gemindert werden darf.

English translation: Now I should like to observe that this is not at all a peculiarity of the house-rent tax, but is characteristic of every tax on yield, since every tax on yield follows the principle that the yield may not be reduced in advance by the tax payable on that yield.

His numerical example turns the alleged spiral into a finite calculation. With tax and surcharges taking 36 florins from every 100 florins of rent, an owner seeking to increase net receipts from 64 to 100 florins must charge approximately 156.2 florins. The required gross rent already incorporates the tax payable:

Damit ist aber der Kreislauf, von dem der Herr Professor vorhin gesprochen hat, beendigt, denn das zieht dann keine weitere Steigerung der Hauszinssteuer nach sich.

English translation: But this brings the cycle of which the professor spoke earlier to an end, for this then entails no further increase in the house-rent tax.

Reisch’s contribution is thus a bounded technical correction, not a comprehensive reform programme. He treats the owner’s desired net return as a calculation problem; he does not establish whether tenants could actually bear the resulting rent. Its significance lies in separating surcharge trends, the taxable base, and the arithmetic of recovering tax through rent—questions that the image of an automatic upward spiral obscures.