Business Tax Commission as a Form of Interaction Between Entrepreneurs and Officials in Russia at the Beginning of the 20th Century (Based on Materials From Tomsk Province)

The repartitional commissions for business tax in late imperial Russia gave room to the interaction between entrepreneurs (elected representatives of the taxpayers) and officials (tax inspectors) who determined jointly the amount of the supplementary business tax for each of the taxpayers. However, the mechanism of working out these decisions has not been investigated yet. This task can be fulfilled due to the fact that some taxpayers filed appeals against the tax apportionment, and the repartitional commissions that considered those appeals were obliged to report their considerations with a special journal. The article is based on the analysis of a collection of journals of one of the Tomsk uezd repartitional commissions, distinguished by an unusually detailed presentation of the results of the appeal discussions. It is proven that the commission, without using their right of rejection for formal reasons, was able to evaluate all the submitted appeals with full knowledge of the facts. In many cases, it was the elected members of the commission that provided the necessary information. Often the source of information was trade deputies (elected representatives of entrepreneurs who were not members of the repartitional commission) or “competent persons” whether attracted by the tax inspector or speaking on their own initiative. As a rule, successful interaction between inspector and entrepreneurs was ensured by a sense of competition, which prompted merchants to indicate the hidden profits of their neighbors. But in some cases, when the interests of taxpayers were infringed upon by the actions of the authorities, entrepreneurs revealed a sense of professional solidarity and achieved a tax reduction.