person. In 1888, in 2,283 of 22,749 primary election districts there was only one eligible voter in class one; in another 1,764 there were two eligible voters, and in 96 primary election districts there was also only one eligible voter in the second class. In 1891 and 1893 the allocation of eligible voters into classes was restructured as a result of the far-reaching tax reforms introduced under Prussian Finance Minister Johannes von Miquel. Land, building and businesses taxes became municipal rather than state taxes. A progressive income tax replaced the class tax and the classified income tax; in addition, a supplementary tax (wealth tax) was introduced as a direct state tax. The progressive income tax rates and supplementary tax placed a heavier burden on wealthy citizens, with the result that even fewer men would have been allocated to the first and second classes. To prevent this, an amount of three marks was applied to each voter who did not pay income tax. Voters who paid no other direct tax beyond the fictitious three marks always fell into the third class. Direct municipal taxes were henceforth also taken into account along with direct state taxes when calculating classes. Where no municipal taxes were levied, the taxes that would have been due under previous law continued to be taken into account as a fictitious amount. This was a de facto protection clause for landlords in municipality-free manor districts. There were no municipal taxes since landowners would have paid them to themselves. Until then, landowners paid a considerable amount of tax on land but often little on income. Without the credit of notional municipal taxes, some landowners could have slipped into the second class. Another significant change for cities in 1891 was that the division into classes was always carried out at the level of the primary election district. Until then, in municipalities divided into several primary election districts, the required tax amount for the first or second class was the same in all primary election districts (unless a class had remained unoccupied in this way). That changed in 1891, in some cases drastically. In 1888, for example, 494 marks were required for the first class in Cologne in all primary election districts. If the division into thirds had been carried out under the new rules at the level of the original election districts, the amount would have varied between 18 and 24,896