The working style of the business tax distribution office and the tax inspector's personality in Tomsk Governorate in the early 20th century: The factor of an official in the epoch of income taxes formation
Business tax distribution offices in Russia in the early 20th century were a part of the system of relations between the state and the taxpayer, relevant to the era of income taxation formation in the Western world. Working in the interests of filling up the state budget, the offices consisted mainly of representatives of merchants paying the tax. One of the unexplored issues in the work of the Russian tax offices is the dependence of their practices on the personality of the tax inspector chairing the meetings. Rare material for the study of this issue is provided by the archival fund of the 2nd Tomsk Business Tax Distribution Office. The author's sources include complete annual collections of minutes of the office meetings held under two different tax inspectors. The progress and results of considering the merchants' complaints as presented by the minutes reveal significant differences in the working style of the two inspectors. Under inspector D. Fedorchenko, the office would delve into the state of affairs of each petitioner as deeply as possible and explain reasons for its decision in details. The number of rejections exceeded the number of satisfied applications, the inspector guarded vigilantly the interests of the treasury. Still, decisions in favor of the payers were made not only on the basis of legally indisputable documents, but also on the basis of taxpayers' “unfounded” (according to the instructions) explanations. The office sought to determine as accurately as possible the taxable base for each payer, so as to avoid understating and overstating the amount. Under inspector K. Gruzinov, in most cases, refusal decisions were made on formal grounds, without an attempt to consider the case in substance. And even if merchants presented legally weighty arguments (bookkeeping records), they were in most cases rejected on formal grounds. However, from time to time, K. Gruzinov made concessions to taxpayers that he could well avoid without breaking the law. The facts presented in the article allow a conclusion that the style of work of the two inspectors differed significantly concerning their readiness to accept other people's arguments and the transparency of their decisions. Fedorchenko's methods favored the interests of his duties, meanwhile Gruzinov's style better ensured the personal interest of the inspector, since it did not require selfless overtime work. The system of the business tax was tolerant to the inspetor's taking the way of least resistance, which favored the predominance of Gruzinov's methods throughout the country. Under such conditions, not relying on the conscientiousness of officials, but limiting the rights of tax offices in favor of taxpayers' rights could be the only protection against arbitrariness. Limitation of this kind came true when the 1916 income tax law was being created.