The Common Penny (german: Gemeiner Pfennig or Imperial Penny ) was an

imperial tax Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texas ...

() that was agreed at the instigation of Maximilian I in 1495 at the

Diet of Worms The Diet of Worms of 1521 (german: Reichstag zu Worms ) was an imperial diet (a formal deliberative assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire called by Emperor Charles V and conducted in the Imperial Free City of Worms. Martin Luther was summoned to t ...

, in order to give the

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

the means to wage war against France and against the Osman regime in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

. The tax was to be paid by all subjects of the

Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From the accession of Otto I in 962 unti ...

aged 15 years or more. It was designed as a

poll tax A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...

and

property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inheri ...

that depended on personal status and wealth. Its recovery ran into so many difficulties everywhere that it was explicitly abandoned in 1505. After the Hussite Penny () in 1427, it was another attempt to introduce an imperial tax and was part of the comprehensive, but ultimately unsuccessful

Imperial Reform Imperial Reform ( la, Reformatio imperii, german: Reichsreform) is the name given to repeated attempts in the 15th and 16th centuries to adapt the structure and the constitutional order () of the Holy Roman Empire to the requirements of the early ...

under Emperor Maximilian. The successor of the Common Penny as an imperial tax was the {{lang, de, Kammerzieler.

Literature

* Eberhard Isenmann: ''The Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages''. In: ''The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe. ca. 1200–1815''. Herausgegeben von Richard Bonney, Oxford 1999, pp. 243–280, here pp. 265–267. * Eberhard Isenmann: ''Reichsfinanzen und Reichssteuern im 15. Jahrhundert''. In: ''Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 7''. 1980, pp. 1–76, 129–218. * Peter Moraw: ''Der »Gemeine Pfennig«''. In: ''Mit dem Zehnten fing es an''. Published by U. Schultz, 1986, pp. 130–142. * Peter Schmid: ''Der gemeine Pfennig von 1495. Vorgeschichte und Entstehung, verfassungsgeschichtliche, politische und finanzielle Bedeutung''. (zugleich Habilitation Regensburg 1986), Göttingen, 1989, In: ''Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 34''. Legal history of the Holy Roman Empire History of taxation