Every kopek from 1547 to 2024

Tax stamp 1 Kopeck 1896.
Russian Empire.

Tax stamp 1 Kopeck 1896. Russian Empire
Russian Empire.
теги: [податная]

The accounting methods previously used in Russia for tax collectors, based on a payment booklet and the complex written reporting inseparable from it, proved inconvenient in practice, especially in areas with a semi-literate or illiterate population. In such areas, settlements in most cases were made “from memory” and “on trust,” while payment booklets often remained unused and were even destroyed. In doing so, after paying monetary dues, the taxpayer received no reliable token confirming payment of the levies. Confusion often arose in the accounts, and supervision over the collectors’ own activities was hindered.

For this reason, the former justice of the peace mediator of Podolia Governorate, M.A. Skibinsky, proposed introducing for the illiterate a stamp-based system of tax administration that would eliminate arithmetic записи and be understandable to everyone. He justified his proposal by noting that the rural population had long been accustomed to settling with landowners for the use of land through so-called “chits,” which sometimes existed for decades and even centuries. In the taxpayers’ settlements with the collector, Skibinsky replaced handwritten chits with printed stamps.

In the design of the stamps, to make them understandable to the illiterate, all attributes of monetary value long familiar to peasants were combined: stamps depicting coins worth less than one ruble were given a round shape, and the rest a quadrangular one. The coloring of the stamps matched the color associated with the monetary sign depicted by the stamp: the one-ruble stamp was yellow, the three-ruble green, the five-ruble blue, the ten-ruble red; silver coins were indicated in gray, copper coins in brown. Also, to recognize the number of rubles and kopeks on the stamps, the corresponding number of small strokes was printed.

To control collectors on the one hand and protect the interests of taxpayers on the other, each stamp was assigned personal attribution by marking on the reverse the number of the household head to whom it belonged. All stamps of one taxpayer were combined on a single sheet intended only for him and secured by separate numbering. Next to the stamps on the same sheet were indicated the taxpayer’s given name, patronymic, and surname, all taxable items belonging to him according to his household list, and the levies due from him. Thus an individual tax sheet was obtained, grouping all tax demands предъявленные to the taxpayer, all grounds for these demands, documentary tokens (stamps) protecting the taxpayer from repeated collection of the same levies, and all personal accounts between the taxpayer and the tax collector. The sheets of all taxpayers under a collector’s jurisdiction were bound into a cord-bound, so-called “control book,” which was kept by the collector.

Tax stamps were used in collecting direct taxes from persons of the taxable estate living in rural areas. Initially, as an experiment, they were introduced in certain rural communities of Podolia Governorate (Ukraine), which confirmed the convenience of their use.

In practice, tax stamps began to be used from 1893. They were introduced in 44 uyezds of 21 governorates and in the Turkestan Territory. The benefit of introducing tax stamps was recognized at congresses of tax inspectors of the Turkestan Territory and Olonets Governorate, as well as by a whole number of губернские and uyezd institutions for peasant affairs and by tax inspectors of many uyezds.

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