Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 25. (1996)

TANULMÁNYOK - Fabó Beáta: A budapesti vámvonalrendszer változása a XIX-XX. században 61-84

BEÁTA FABÓ BUDAPEST CUSTOMS SYSTEM IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES SUMMARY The city, and after 1850 the state as well, collected revenues under various designations: street tax, municipal tax, and sales tax. The customs border, around the city changed in accordance with geographic development and changes in traffic patterns. The customhouse line expanded with the growth of the population and urban development. Both natural and artificial barriers such as the city walls, railway embankments, natural trenches and man-made ditches were used to post the customs frontier. In Pest during the Middle Ages the city walls, which enclosed roughly the area known today as the central district, constituted the customs frontier. In an effort to prevent a plague, in 1772 the city, dug had a trench, which served as the toll line for the next one hundred years. During the nineteenth century due to the rapid expansion of industry, trade, and population, as well as the development of the Buda hills, the customs border reached the lines of the railway bed surrounding the city. For a long time the customs area in Buda included the narrow strip between the hills stretching from north to south and the Danube. Later, by the turn of the century, it expanded into the hills. By the time of the unified Budapest of 1930 the customhouse line practically coincided with the administrative boundaries of the city. The sales or city tax system ended on January 1,1950. 84