Bíró Szilvia - Székely Zoltán: Arrabona - Múzeumi Közlemények 49/1. Tanulmányok T. Szőnyi Eszter emlékére (Győr, 2011)
Kücsán József: A háziadó (Domestica) Sopronban, 1792-1849
ARRABONA 2011.49/1. __ TANULMÁNYOK _ THE DOMESTIC TAX (DOMESTICA) IN SOPRON, 1792-1849 At the turn of the 18-19th centuries the Habsburg Monarchy was hit by a severe crisis, since between 1788 and 1791 it led very expensive campaigns against the Turkish Empire and from 1792 it was entangled in a two and a half decade rivalry with France. The successive defeats from the French, the territorial losses and reparations resulted in a permanent rise of the military spending that was not covered by incomes and spiralled up the inflation. The depreciation hit the whole empire, including the already heavily indebted free royal towns. This was the case also in Sopron, where the real value of the taxes could only be preserved by the annual tax revisions. At local level this inflation-indexed tax policy could be implemented in 1792 by the introduction of an extra tax, called Domestica. The Domestica was a calculated tax that meant that it was not applied for some real piece of property or earning, but its amount was determined as a certain percentage (as the tax increase and the depreciation required) of the base tax that was the total of the subtotals of minutely calculated subdivisions of the individual taxes. The item thus determined was added to the base tax and it was the normal annual tax. Representing the annually determined values of the Domescita on a chart it is possible to follow the rate of tax increase; on the other hand, it is also possible to identify the traces of those mishaps the consequences of which put extra burden to the critical years: such were the three fires in 1808 and the French occupation in 1809. The damages and devastating long-lasting impact of these were still cited by the local politicians after 20 years, when they wanted to reduce the taxes of the city. József Kücsán 178
