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• Scientific Council of RAS on economic history;
• Research and Educational Center «The economic history of Central Russia and the Middle Volga region» of Ogarev Mordovia State University;
• Center of Economic History of  Lomonosov Moscow State University

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ISSN 2409-630X (Print), ISSN 2618-916X (Online)

DOI: 10.15507/2409-630X.065.020.202402.101-113

УДК [94(476):336.225.64(476)(091)] “18”

Aliaksandr V. Yerashevich

Belarusian State Economic University (Minsk, Republic of Belarus),

e-mail: erash06@rambler.ru

 

Tax Arrears in the Belarusian Provinces of the Russian Empire in the First Half of the 19th Century: Reasons for Accumulation and Methods of Repayment

 

Abstract

Introduction. The use of historical experience in solving the causes of accumulation and ways of minimizing of tax arrears is necessary to increase the efficiency of tax revenues, upon which the formation of the revenue part of the state budget and the implementation by the government of its priority functions and tasks depend. The purpose of the article is to try to clarify the reasons for the growth and the methods officially used by the authorities to repay tax arrears in the Belarusian provinces of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century.

Materials and Methods. The study primarily relies on unpublished data from official correspondence and statistical materials from archives in St. Petersburg, Minsk, Grodno, and Vilnius. The Marxist approach is used as the theoretical and methodological model of the research of socio-economic phenomena and processes in connection with systemic and modernization.

Results. The article presents reflections of legal authorities and the author on the reasons for the accumulation and officially sanctioned methods of repaying tax arrears in the Belarusian provinces of the Russian Empire during the pre-reform period. The sustained growth of arrears in state taxes and fees in these lands, stemming from the serfdom socio-economic system, depended on a combination of objective conditions and subjective factors. A significant reason for the accumulation of tax shortfalls in towns, townships, and rural areas was the blurred personal financial responsibility of taxpayers and local administrative officials against the backdrop of collective group responsibility of the consolidated taxpayers for the results of financial receipts of tax arrears into the state treasury. There prevailed a mutual transfer of the spheres of tax liability between different levels of categories of potential taxpayers and local administration for tax shortfalls of previous years. Various administrative-fiscal and military-coercive forms and methods of influencing non-payers remained ineffective and failed to halt the growth of tax arrears. The main reason for the inability to make a one-time rapid repayment of tax debts to the state was the lack of material-financial resources among peasants and townspeople. Simultaneously, the possibility of rapid repayment of tax arrears depended on traditional behavioral stereotypes and modes of action, socio-psychological attitudes of responsible subjects of taxation.

Discussion and Conclusion. The factual materials, positions, and conclusions proposed by the author create conditions for further in-depth comparative study of the topic within spatial and temporal frameworks. They can be used to improve the quality of the educational process in social-humanitarian disciplines of the fraternal peoples of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.

Keywords: direct taxes, salary taxes, poll taxation, Belarusian provinces, Russian Empire.

For citation: Yerashevich A. V. Tax Arrears in the Belarusian Provinces of the Russian Empire in the First Half of the 19th Century: Reasons for Accumulation and Methods of Repayment. Ekonomicheskaya istoriya = Russian Journal of Economic History. 2024; 20(2): 101–113. (In Russ.). DOI: 10.15507/2409-630X.065.020.202402.101-113.

 

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