Special taxes and levies were supposed to prevent employers from only hiring central and eastern European civilian laborers because they cost them less due to the lower wages and the dispensation from social insurance contributions in some cases. The “social compensation levy" (“Sozialausgleichsabgabe”) applied from August 1940 to Polish civilian laborers who were forced to work in agriculture, which most of them did at the time. Soviet civilian laborers were initially subject to an “Eastern worker levy“ (“Ostarbeiterabgabe”); the “social compensation levy” also applied to them from April 1944. Thus, in theory, Polish and Soviet civilian laborers cost employers as much as a German worker. However, this did not mean that Polish and Soviet civilian laborers received a higher wage. Instead, the German state profited from this.