When I made my first visit to the offices of the Libertarian Party (good folks, but I’m not a member) to meet Austin Petersen, I didn’t realize I’d be interviewed on economic policy, but it was fun, anyway. Here’s part I:
And here’s part II:
And here’s part III:
Hi Tom, I love it. Very thoughful, as usual.
Could you give a pointer, where I can find the legislation of Bismarcks Fleet Tax? That would be very nice.
Regards,
Daniel
My friend Wolfgang Müller pointed me to a description of the tax in question here:
http://www.zoll.de/b0_zoll_und_steuern/b0_verbrauchsteuern/i0_schaumwein/index.html
As Wolfgang noted,
“The Sektsteuer was originally introduced in 1902 to finance the Kaiser-Wilhem-Kanal (today called the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal) and the German imperial Navy. In 1933 the tax was abolished to ease the burden of the economic crisis but only to be reintroduced in 1939 to contribute to the development of the U-Boot fleet.
After the fall of the Reich the Federal Republic took over – together with most other legal obligations – the authority over this tax and keeps it alive until today.
The Sektsteuer as it is known an called, is the proverbial example (at least for people of my age and older) for a tax once introduced for a specific purpose and then never abolished. On a technical note: the German tax regulations follows the “Nonaffektionsprinzip” according to which there are no taxes to finance a specific project. Meaning: All tax money, no matter from which source feeds into one federal tax kitty. Even like the Solidaritätssteuer (Solidarity Tax) introduced after the reunificaton to help financing the build up of East Germany. It is a surcharge on the income tax and, of course, still in place.
The tax on a typical bottle of sparkling (0,75 Liter) is 1,02 Euro and collected at the factory or when imported at the border. Keep in mind that additional to this the VAT is charged (19%).”
I hope that that helps!
Wow, I knew about the Sektsteuer, but I had no idea of it’s history. Thank you very much, Tom.