ABSTRACT
The Trade Tax, as common to Prussia and all the other important States, is at once a tax on business profits and on the capital requisite to carry on any business undertaking. As the Prussian system represents a combination of the methods of trade taxation most favoured, an explanation of its operation will suffice. In Prussia and the other larger States the department stores are specially taxed, in the form either of a tax supplementary to the ordinary trade tax or of a higher rating under this tax. In so taxing the stores the Governments have been actuated primarily by a desire to protect the small shopkeepers, though the larger revenue which has resulted has not been despised. In the larger Prussian towns, however, the consumption taxes only yield in general from 1 per cent, to 3 per cent, of the total revenue from taxation.
