ABSTRACT
The law itself particularly encourages the communes to look to taxes on real estate for revenue. Frankfort-on-Main was one of the first towns to modify the land and building taxes, and to give a lead to Prussian communes in the reformed taxation of real estate. Real estate has been taxed for local purposes ever since communal government was organised on the existing lines. The unearned increment tax, as known in German towns, differs in various details—such as the rates charged, the proportions of increased value exempted and the periods of respite—but the broad principles are everywhere the same. The taxable increment is held to be excess of the price or value on re-sale or transfer over the price or value at the previous change of ownership. Power to impose a special tax on building sites on that principle is given to communes by the Prussian Communal Taxation Law of 1893, as it is by the corresponding Wurtemberg law of 1903.
