V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v20
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

PRELIMINARY DRAFT OF THE BASIC PROPOSITIONS
ON THE REPLACEMENT OF THE SURPLUS-APPROPRIATION SYSTEM
BY A TAX IN KIND,
SUBMITTED BY THE C.C. FOR CONSIDERATION BY THE TENTH CONGRESS.
[Between March 7 and 14, 1921]

1. In order to ensure a proper and tranquil conduct of economy on the basis of a freer disposal by the tiller of his economic resources, to strengthen the peasant economy and raise its productivity, and also for the purpose of precisely establishing the state obligations falling upon the tillers, the surplus-appropriation system, as a method of state procurements of food, raw materials and fodder, is replaced by a tax in kind.

2. This tax must be smaller than the burden imposed hitherto by means of the surplus-appropriation system. The amount of the tax must be calculated so as to cover the minimum essential needs of the army, the urban workers and the non-agricultural population. The total amount of the tax must be steadily reduced as the restoration of transport and industry enables the Soviet government to obtain agricultural products in the normal way, i.e., in exchange for factory and handicraft products.

3. The tax is levied in the form of a percentage or proportional deduction from the products produced on the farm, based on the account of the harvest, the number of consumers in the farm and the actual number of livestock on it.

4. The tax must be progressive; the percentage of deduction for the farms of middle peasants and low-power peasants, for the farms of urban workers, etc., must be lowered.

The farms of the poorest peasants may be exempted from some, and in exceptional cases from all, forms of the tax in kind.

Diligent peasant farmers who increase the area under crop on their farms, and likewise increase the productivity of the farm as a whole, receive privileges in the fulfilment of the tax in kind, either in the form of a reduction of the tax rates, or in the form of partial exemption from the tax.

5. The law on the tax must be drawn up and published in such a way that the tillers may be informed as precisely as possible of the amount of the obligations falling upon them before the start of the spring field work.

6. The delivery to the state of the products due under the tax is to be completed within precisely fixed periods established by law.

7. The amount of products due for delivery under the tax is calculated for the rural associations (societies). Within the rural association the tax is distributed among the farmers by their decision in accordance with the general norms provided for in Section 3.

For the purpose of controlling the application of the tax norms and the collection of the tax, elected organisations of local peasants are formed according to groups of taxpayers of different amounts of tax.

8. All stocks of food, raw materials and fodder remaining with the tillers after they have fulfilled the tax are at their full disposal and may be used by them for improving and strengthening their economy, for increasing personal consumption, and for exchange for products of factory and handicraft industry and of agricultural production.

Exchange is permitted within the limits of local economic turnover.

9. For the purpose of supplying the poorest population and for exchange for the surpluses of food, fodder and raw materials voluntarily delivered to the state by the population after fulfilling the tax due from it, a special fund of articles of agricultural implements and articles of mass consumption is created. This fund is created from products of domestic production and from those articles for the acquisition of which abroad a part of the state gold fund and a part of the procured raw materials are allocated.

DRAFT RESOLUTION
OF THE TENTH CONGRESS

The Congress, approving in the main the propositions submitted by the C.C. on the replacement of the surplus-appropriation system by a tax in kind, instructs the Party Central Committee to co-ordinate these propositions as speedily as possible, to work out in detail the forms of putting the tax into effect, and to pass the appropriate law through the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars (SNK).