SUCCESSION DUTY. In the English fiscal system, a tax placed on the gratuitous acquisition of property which passes on the death of any person, by means of a transfer from one person to another person. (See LEGACY DUTY AND SUCCESSION DUTY.) SUCCESSOR STATE, a term applied to a State formed wholly or partly out of another State which has ceased to exist, thus forming a wholly distinct political entity, but inheriting certain obligations, e. g., the repayment of a public debt, in herent in its origin. As neither Turkey nor Russia have ceased to exist, although their forms of State have changed, the only modern States to which this term can strictly be applied are those which the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon describe as "States to which territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Mon archy is transferred and States arising from the dismemberment of that Monarchy." These States were taken by the authors of the above treaties to be Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia. East Galicia, which, like these four States, had been
recognized as its successor by the Austrian "Liquidierungskabi nett" of Oct. 1918, failed to maintain its existence, and the plea of the Austrian republic to be considered a Successor State was rejected by the Powers at St. Germain, who affirmed its identity with the old Austria. The Successor States were acquitted of moral identity with the old monarchy, and were thus not called on to pay reparations, but were required instead to pay "con tributions towards the Allied cost of liberation" on a scale based on pre-war taxation. Among other obligations was the signing of the Minorities Treaties. Italy signed no Minorities Treaty, but consented to regulate the financial position of the territories which she had inherited from Austria and Hungary on a basis similar to that taken for the Successor States. (C. A. M.)