Salt tax

In our country, the period of time 1866-1876 was one of the most peaceful. But not all of these “peaceful conditions” caused a seemingly certain increase in income. First of all and most powerfully, this increase is caused by an increase in taxes and excise taxes of various categories. That the latter reason plays the main role follows from the fact that the source of income, which has the largest share among others - drinking - almost 67 percent of all indirect ones, represents an increase only in the amount of collection, and not in the amount of consumption in the first years, after replacement excise tax system. As for other indirect incomes, namely customs, beet sugar, tobacco, the increase occurred partly due to increased consumption, partly due to increased taxes, partly due to a more correct and rational setting of beet sugar income.

If, despite all the zeal and energy on the part of the police in collecting arrears, it turns out to be hopeless and subject to exclusion of about one and a half million annually from the salary collections of the entire peasant class and about one million rubles from the payments of peasants who emerged from serfdom, then it can hardly be allowed that the activity and diligence of the police, being increased tenfold, were able to recover 50 million rubles, which had accumulated in a relatively short period of time? In particular, the hopelessness is obvious in relation to the payment of redemption payments, for which the arrears are almost equal to half of the annual salary. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to completely exclude all these 50 million rubles, since this can only ensure the continued more efficient receipt of normal taxes and fees? Are these arrears not even now beggars and proletarians in the literal sense of the word? Can they hardly be included in the lists of those capable of filing taxes? Collection of arrears from them will free them, at least, from the tribute that they must pay to the policeman or collector who is annoyingly pursuing them. And is it possible to allow the possibility of replenishing such a huge figure of the debt weighing on them, if they have already been reduced by previous collections to the state of being deprived of any ability to pay? That the latter is impossible follows from a very simple calculation: assuming that the average amount of arrears of 10 rubles weighs on the arrears of a householder, it turns out that there are no more or less than 5,000,000 such families subject to deprivation of their last means of subsistence, since it is difficult allow that, with the police’s diligence and energy in collecting past shortfalls, some of the signs of prosperity will survive! And since the arrears valuation, as well as the auction sale, constitutes, in most cases, a third and even a fourth part of the market value, the amount of property needed to replenish the arrears is so great, so fabulous, that it quite clearly goes beyond the physical possibilities. Suffice it to say that this requires 4,800,000 cows or the same number of horses, or 24,000,000 sheep, counting a poor peasant’s cow and horse as 10 rubles, and a sheep as 2 rubles! It is self-evident that something approximately similar is unattainable and unrealizable.

It is hardly possible to imagine another issue, the correct and rational solution of which would be so closely linked to the improvement of the conditions of our social development, the solution of which would be so closely linked to the improvement of the system of taxes and fees in general, and the direct increase in state revenues in particular, as the issue with which I want to occupy the reader’s attention, namely salt.

Of all the existing taxes, the excise tax on salt is the most blatant in its injustice and the most burdensome for the population: it directly encroaches on the well-being of the people and the state. If it exists in almost all European states except Great Britain, it is because it falls mainly on the poor class of the people, whose voice is always a voice crying in the wilderness; This tax is defended only by officials of the salt department, which, however, knows that instead of income it brings a huge loss to the state. Does the salt department really believe that the people who withstood the two-hundred-year Tatar yoke, who drove out the French in 1812, bore the defense of Sevastopol on their shoulders - the people who take up arms at the first call of the tsar in the name of love for the fatherland, is such a people really unworthy of being ceded to them? was there a right and opportunity to season stale rye bread with Astrakhan or Crimean herring or Ukrainian corned beef?

We have already seen that the excise system in the 17th century aroused not only murmurs, but also the most disastrous consequences. Restored in 1727, it did not survive even 3 years of existence, because it turned out to be embarrassing for the people and unprofitable for the treasury. At that time, however, the tax was very insignificant in comparison with what is being projected now. Wine, tobacco and sugar, on which excise taxes are also imposed, are completely different from salt. These substances are luxuries, which both rich and poor can do without, and the tax on them falls equally on both. But salt is an essential substance, and the tax on it primarily falls on the poor man, on the producer. It indirectly falls on the rich to the extent that, under the salt tax, industry is constrained, productivity falls and everything rises in price. If previously, with a lower excise tax, about 1/4 of foreign salt was consumed in Russia, then with an increase in the tax, therefore, with greater constraint on the salt industry, the consumption of such salt should increase even more, and consequently, there will be an even greater loss of capital leaving countries to the detriment of finances.

Expenditures on state needs, naturally increasing every year, far exceed the income figure; these surpluses or deficits are inevitably covered either by loans, internal and external, with or without lotteries, or by issuing banknotes, therefore, by measures primarily that further complicate our economic and financial situation in the present and future. In my extreme understanding, our situation can be brought back to normal only through reforms that will cause an increase in income, in other words, that will help increase our productivity, our insignificant wealth, in a word, improve our economic condition. Our present state is not temporary or extraordinary: it developed completely correctly and organically over a very long period; it is the result of the past. Like any living organism that bears very clear traces of those conditions under the influence of which it developed during the period preceding the given one, our economic condition, as an external sign of the social organism as a whole, very clearly reflects the traces of those conditions under the influence which it developed in a period of time preceding our generation. The great reforms of recent times cannot and could not but serve as a guarantee of a better future for us. But if, despite what has happened and has already been realized, we still see many negative aspects that have reached their greatest development and manifestation, then perhaps it is because our body is too upset by previous influences, or the results of all destruction, all talents, in short time, have not yet had time to speak out, or, finally, in all these reforms there is still no set of those conditions under the influence of which the development of the organism can only be completely correct, completely normal. As for me personally, I am most inclined to side with the lack and absence of the latter in general, and as for strictly financial measures, they were more likely to contradict rather than correspond to the spirit of reforms in other areas of our social development. Suffice it to recall that for all 18 years of its existence, the special tax commission limited its activities only to the search for new taxes, only to the elevation of old ones, which can hardly be attributed to the reform side of the activity designed to improve the system of taxes and fees.

But the high cost of salt causes stagnation, low productivity and, as a result, the high cost of not only animal products. Salt has extensive use in agriculture and industry for the preparation of both plant and animal products for future use.

Let's focus on one of the very famous products - cucumbers, for example. In the southern and partly central parts of Russia, the latter are bred in the fields, on the so-called bakshas and bashtans. In good favorable years, their value drops to 30-50 kopecks per thousand pieces. With such cheapness, at a time when in the north the price is not lower than 2-5 rubles per 1000, and in winter up to 10 rubles, pickling and storing cucumbers for future use on the spot would give rise to a new extensive food industry in winter, both in the areas where they grow , and in the northern ones, which do not benefit from the climatic conditions of the south. Although in this matter the high cost of salt is a comparatively smaller cost and obstacle, where will the consumers come from? If the population denies itself, due to poverty and wretchedness, sufficient nutrition for itself with the bread that it produces itself and which it hastens to sell in order to pay taxes and arrears, as well as to purchase fabulously expensive salt, then it is clear that all sorts of pickles, all kinds of preparations and supplies - an unattainable luxury for him. That is why there cannot be the emergence of a harvesting industry, which would contribute to a better supply and greater cheapness of winter food for all segments of the population, which in turn would cause the cultivation of plants like dill, caraway, anise, tarragon, etc., and the consumption of vinegar and pepper would increase , carnations, etc., etc.