It would be extremely surprising if the confusion caused by the currency misery in all areas that leave taxes untouched were equally astonishing if the serious injustices that result from it did not trigger deep dissatisfaction.
This was also expressed very clearly in the completion of the two bills - the amendment to the Income Tax Act and the one to the Compulsory Loan Act.
Even if one detaches what was said in the Reichstag on this occasion from all agitational accessories intended to have an effect on the outside, there is still enough that stimulates reflection and more than this: forces one to ponder ways and means of how the worst damage to be addressed as a result of our market disruption can be eliminated.
There were two things in particular that the battle revolved around when deliberating on the income tax amendment: the structure of the tariff and ensuring that taxes were received in good time.
As our readers know, the Reich government had proposed a tariff to be used for the assessment of income in 1922 and one tailored to the following year's income assessment.
The Reichstag recognized this double regulation as correct in principle, but made substantial changes to the tariffs themselves in the direction of more complete adaptation to the further inflation that has meanwhile occurred.
The latter applies in particular to next year's tariff.
Here the tax committee and with it the plenary went far beyond the government's proposal.
This will probably be a more academic regulation, since the 1923 tax scale is unlikely to be spared the fate of its predecessors: that they were already outdated before they could take effect.
The erratic marker recovery that we witnessed these days, albeit initially only as a one-day phenomenon, provided interesting perspectives in this respect as well.
Whether the Reichstag did not go much too far with the regulations made for 1923, whether - if instead of the certainly very desired improvement a further deterioration of our mark should occur - no one can say today whether it will not have to go much further.
Therefore, as we have already pointed out, we believe that it was a psychological mistake, both in terms of foreign and domestic policy, to throw this bone of contention now.
But a word must be said about the fundamental considerations that guided supporters and opponents of the regulation that was made.
For the Left, the resulting numerical reductions, as far as the middle and higher incomes are concerned, went much too far;
there was quite unjustified talk of a reduction in income tax, because the reduction in the purchasing power of our mark and the associated future inflation of all incomes were not sufficiently taken into account.
On closer examination, as we recently did with the help of the index numbers on some examples from the group of wage and salary recipients, the results will often turn out to be quite different from what superficial speeches made from the point of view of purely agitational efforts claimed.