Just a note - I am under the impression that taxation as redistribution (death duties, graduated income tax etc) went back before 1914. Death duties were introduced in 1894, and the People's Budget of 1910 induced a constitutional crisis.
Of course - as I mention, income tax dates from 1842! But the war really is a structural break. Most people were beneath the threshold for the barely-graduated income tax before the war whereas most workers entered the system afterwards. Death duties also went from a low rate on only the largest estates to fairly high rate with a lower threshold. Overall, direct taxes as a proportion of revenues increases dramatically and never goes back.
As with many other things, one can see the trend before the war. One argument I am sympathetic to is that, for the Central Powers and probably the Russian Empire also, the war was an attempt to forestall those trends - bundled loosely as liberalism and a working class share in political power.
Just a note - I am under the impression that taxation as redistribution (death duties, graduated income tax etc) went back before 1914. Death duties were introduced in 1894, and the People's Budget of 1910 induced a constitutional crisis.
Of course - as I mention, income tax dates from 1842! But the war really is a structural break. Most people were beneath the threshold for the barely-graduated income tax before the war whereas most workers entered the system afterwards. Death duties also went from a low rate on only the largest estates to fairly high rate with a lower threshold. Overall, direct taxes as a proportion of revenues increases dramatically and never goes back.
As with many other things, one can see the trend before the war. One argument I am sympathetic to is that, for the Central Powers and probably the Russian Empire also, the war was an attempt to forestall those trends - bundled loosely as liberalism and a working class share in political power.