Communist Albania, singles tax and bans on weddings with veils and ornaments

From: Llambi Zisi

In tax-free Albania there is a strange tax, a tax for singles who delay getting married and widows who decide to stay single.

With the decree of the Presidium of the People's Assembly dated February 9, 1951, it is known that the authorities had set a tax amount for singles, childless widows and childless divorcees starting at three percent of monthly income for ages over 20 – for men and for women (see document below).

The decision provided for the division into several categories of persons who pay the tax. The fee was calculated at three percent for workers and employees on the monthly income. For merchants, craftsmen and professionals it was calculated four percent on the annual income. Villagers had to pay 600 ALL per year, while other people paid 200 ALL per year. So the decree also had its own tax exemptions. Soldiers, non-commissioned officers, students, invalids, religious clergy, widows, etc., were prohibited from paying the celibacy tax.

For workers and employees of state administrations, economic, social and political organizations and for workers and private employees, the tax was calculated by the employer based on the salary for the previous month and was withheld from the salary of the first fifteen days of the following month. For merchants, tax was calculated on income at the end of the year. They could make the payment in four installments, on April 1, July 1, August 1, and December 1. In case of non-payment, the decree provided for specific sanctions.

For the name of the stop, the decision was expressed, or for non-regular tax stops of single workers and employees, childless widows and childless divorcees, as well as for the failure to pay the prohibited amounts to the state bank on time, the responsible persons are punished with a fine up to plus one thousand lek. The fine is given by the decision of the head of the financial section at the executive committee of the district or city and is deducted from the salary.

If the tax is not paid within the specified deadlines, action is taken based on the provisions of the law on the extraction of state income. Citizens could object to the singles tax within 30 days. They were reviewed by the financial section manager and the corresponding decision is communicated to the payer in writing".

Niman Zeneli, originally from Vagja e Vlora, is one of those punished with the celibacy tax.

In December of the year 51, he went to the mandatory military service in Vermosh, Shkodra, and returned to his hometown after three years when he was 23 years old. Meanwhile, for three years in a row, the family had not paid the state tax for his late bachelorhood. The local officials who came to the house every year to collect the tax, did not want to know that Nimani had been a soldier for those three years and according to the relevant decree was exempted from the tax. And, the unexpected happened. In the absence of unpaid tax, they took away the cow of the house.

"It was something terrible, despite the fact that today it seems paradoxical", Nimani remembers. We only breathed from one cow and it was violently taken from us. Oh, how much that fine cost us! We ran out of buttermilk for a whole month. There was nothing worse, it was necessary to adapt to survive. The next year, then I found the bride and the taxi driver took the trouble of me".

There have been dozens of such paradoxes. Single men from 20 to 50 years old paid the obligation according to the law, which for the time was not a small fee. Likewise, women who remained unmarried until the age of 40.

Wedding veils and ornaments were prohibited by law. The slogan was Let's do socialist weddings, simple and without bourgeois ornaments. In implementation of this directive that came directly from the head of the regime, in the mid-1970s, another decree regulated the most recent and most beautiful event of Albanian youth. According to him, the bride's veil and dress were excluded from the wedding, while other ornaments were prohibited. Such an unheard-of disruption was met with an internal revolt, but no one dared not to implement it.

Shops of bridal dresses and other ornaments were closed by order. In all cases where someone exceeded this norm, he was legally punished. In fact, there were cases when authorities who found violations entered violently among the wedding guests and broke up the wedding.

It's no coincidence that wedding photo sets from the 1970s and '80s don't have veils and wedding dresses. This is a distant vision, but one that has remained in the memory of those who had the biggest event of their lives in this period.

Read too Weddings in Albania, at the time of great poverty