3rd issue.
Stamp of the Department of the Institutions of Empress Maria (DIEM). Entertainment stamps were affixed to tickets for the cinematograph, circus, and theater and were canceled by tearing the ticket.
In § 16, ch. VI of the first part of the General Plan of the Foundling Home, Supreme-approved on September 1, 1763, it was established: “from public entertainments, i.e., comedies, operas, balls, and all kinds of paid amusements, to take one quarter of the income for the Foundling Home.”
By decree of July 12, 1783 it was ordered to take from performances one quarter of the net income; and by decree of February 22, 1798 it was prescribed that, instead of one quarter of the net income of municipal theaters, one tenth of the gross income should always be remitted to the Foundling Home. On December 21, 1797, there was also a Supreme आदेश that governors “take into their special care” the collection from entertainments.
After the death of Empress Maria Feodorovna (October 24, 1828), the levy on entertainments began to decrease, and this decrease continued until the end of the 1860s. This is explained by the fact that the savings and loan treasuries of the guardianship councils yielded enormous sums, while the levy on entertainments brought, in comparison with these millions, insignificant funds 1). Therefore, all attention was directed to the financial institutions. In addition, from 1854 there arose for the guardianship councils an almost de facto impossibility of exercising their privilege of collecting from entertainments; specifically, in that year the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters also received the right (abolished in 1882) to a portion of the levy on capital-city entertainments, as a result of which entrepreneurs had to pay a double levy. When demands for payment were presented by the guardianship councils, entertainment entrepreneurs pointed to the outright impossibility of fulfilling these demands, given the burden of the double levy, which threatened them with ruin.
As indicated above, from 1828 the levy decreased, and this decrease was noticed not only in the levy from entertainments given by private individuals, but also in the levy from the Imperial Theaters. Therefore, as early as 1850 the Guardianship Council began correspondence with the theater directorate about providing, in place of one tenth of income, an annual fixed sum. As a result, on October 6, 1851, Supreme consent was obtained for the Imperial Theaters to pay annually into the guardianship councils 7,000 rubles for the St. Petersburg theaters and 5,000 rubles for the Moscow theaters.
With the transfer of the savings and loan treasuries to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, the funds of the guardianship councils decreased to such an extent that it became necessary to find some source to increase these funds. And so, from 1868 various measures were taken to strengthen the levy on entertainments. These measures consisted mainly in more proper supervision over the receipt of the levy from entertainments given in the capitals, but until recently this levy was collected by agreement with entertainment entrepreneurs. Independently of this, the guardianship councils paid special attention to developing the question of the levy on entertainments and began to entrust this development to various persons and commissions; finally, on May 5, 1892, the opinion of the State Council was Supreme-approved on changing the method of collection in the sense that henceforth this levy would be collected not from entertainment entrepreneurs, but from visitors as an addition to the ticket price.
From the levies on entertainments, over the first 15 months more than 1,000,000 rubles were collected, and the cost of collecting the levy amounted to only 5% of this sum.
Fiscal stamp of tax on spectacles and entertainment 1 Kopeck 1915.
Department of the Institutions of Empress Maria (VUIM).
