Richard Kerschagl, Das Steuersystem der USA und der UdSSR (1949)

Richard Kerschagl’s 1949 German-language article compares American and Soviet taxation by moving from fiscal constitutions to principal taxes and their economic functions. Its governing distinction is between fiscal technique and institutional purpose: contrasting property regimes can employ similar tax instruments while assigning them different roles in revenue collection, distribution, and production.

The American discussion begins with overlapping fiscal jurisdictions. Rather than dividing tax sources comprehensively among federal, state, and municipal governments, the system permits extensive concurrent taxation:

Es ist überaus kennzeichnend, daß bei der Untersuchung von zehn typischen Steuergruppen neun derselben dem Bund, neun den Bundesstaaten und fünf den Gemeinden zustehen, also der Typus einer Parallelbesteuerung.

English translation: It is exceedingly characteristic that, in an examination of ten typical groups of taxes, nine of them fall to the federal government, nine to the federal states and five to the municipalities — hence the type of a parallel taxation.

This overlap gives fiscal decentralization practical consequences. Governments draw on shared tax bases while applying different definitions, exemptions, and deductions. Estate-tax credits alleviate some duplication without establishing a unified allocation of revenues. Kerschagl subsequently distinguishes federal reliance on income and profit taxation, state reliance on sales and consumption taxes, and municipal dependence on property taxation. American federalism thus combines overlapping powers with markedly different revenue structures.

For the Soviet Union, ownership and economic coordination become the central analytical categories. Kerschagl differentiates state enterprises, cooperative and collective property, and the restricted private sector. The budget is closely connected to monetary policy, credit, production, and foreign trade. Taxation consequently operates within a system in which public authorities already control many of the prices and transactions from which revenue arises.

Überhaupt hat das Produktionsproblem in der Sowjetwirtschaft vorwiegend technischen und wirtschaftsorganisatorischen Charakter.

English translation: In general, the problem of production in the Soviet economy has a predominantly technical and economic-organizational character.

This characterization frames the question of why taxation persists under state ownership. Uniform selling prices do not eliminate differences in production costs; taxes and profit transfers can absorb the resulting enterprise surpluses. Differentiated treatment of cooperatives acknowledges their distinct conditions, while procurement prices influence collective-farm incomes and taxable capacity. Taxation also allows deductions from earnings without simply abandoning incentive wages. Its continued use reflects administrative flexibility, motivational considerations, and the coexistence of different ownership sectors.

The detailed comparison surveys American personal and corporate income taxes, estate and gift duties, wartime profit taxation, excises, and social-security levies. Kerschagl treats 1913 as a decisive moment in federal income taxation and relates its constitutional foundation to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. His account connects particular fiscal instruments to the uneven distribution of resources and responsibilities across levels of government.

The Soviet inventory emphasizes turnover taxation and distinguishes enterprise liabilities from citizens’ income taxes. Taxes on services, cooperative earnings, wages, agriculture, and property have differentiated regulatory functions. Assessment tied to actual turnover links revenue collection to supervision of production, but the economic incidence of the turnover tax remains partly unresolved:

Hierbei bleibt noch die Frage offen, inwieweit die Umsatzsteuer, soweit ihre Entrichtung im Verkehr genossenschaftlicher Betriebe sich untereinander abspielt, direkt konsumbeeinflussenden Charakter trägt.

English translation: Here the question still remains open to what extent the turnover tax, insofar as its payment takes place in the dealings of cooperative enterprises among themselves, bears a directly consumption-influencing character.

This qualification matters because a tax’s formal designation does not by itself establish whether it principally redistributes enterprise income or influences consumption. Kerschagl likewise identifies tensions among Soviet incentives: strong progression on collective farms’ free profits restrains independent economic activity, while favorable wage treatment and limits to progression encourage skilled labor and increased output.

The conclusion rejects a simple opposition between capitalist taxation and socialist price administration. Both systems retain progressive direct taxes and recognizable tax categories; Soviet turnover taxation is particularly developed. Similar techniques nevertheless serve different distributive and political ends. Soviet taxes absorb surpluses within administered prices and more explicitly disadvantage independent producers. Kerschagl also judges Soviet fiscal federalism weaker than its American counterpart, while allowing for further American centralization. The article’s distinctive contribution is to locate the meaning of taxation not in the outward form of an instrument alone, but in its relationship to ownership, price control, governmental authority, and incentives.