As of: January 20, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Wolfgang Schörner
Comments
Press
Split
The city of Penzberg may increase taxes (symbolic photo).
© Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Illustration
The Penzberg city treasury suggests increasing the assessment rates for trade and property taxes in Penzberg.
According to their recommendation, the dog tax should also increase.
The reason is a million-dollar hole in the city's finances.
The city council will discuss it next week.
Penzberg - On Tuesday, the Penzberg city council will meet for a special meeting as part of budget discussions.
The city treasury will propose increasing the assessment rates for trade tax and property taxes.
She will also advocate for a higher dog tax.
This emerges from a draft resolution for the meeting.
The background is the city's tense financial situation.
The recommendations come as no surprise.
This had already been thought about aloud in advance.
The SPD parliamentary group, however, recently announced at the New Year's reception that it would reject an increase in trade tax.
Assessment rates for trade taxes are comparatively low in Penzberg
According to city treasurer Marika-Edith Markert, the assessment rate for trade tax in Penzberg (it is 330 points) has not been increased since 1980.
“An increase is long overdue,” she writes in the draft resolution.
For comparison, she mentions assessment rates in Weilheim (380), Schongau (380), Peißenberg (380) and Peiting (400).
With the tax rate, municipalities can regulate the actual amount of trade tax that companies have to pay locally and thereby also gain an advantage when companies locate there.
In the draft resolution, Markert calculates what effect an increase in the assessment rates would have: with 360 points the additional income would be 2.1 million euros, with 370 points it would be 2.8 million euros and with 380 points it would be 3.5 million euros.
In the latter case, according to her, a large company would have to expect an additional burden of 10,500 euros.
For a medium-sized company it would be around 1,600 euros.
On average over the past three years, the city collected 29.3 million euros in trade tax per year.
City treasurers also recommend increases in property taxes and dog taxes
She also considers an increase in property taxes A and B, which property owners have to pay, to be overdue.
The city has collected an average of 2.9 million euros from these taxes over the past three years.
The current assessment rate (350) has been in effect since 2012. It is also partly below the assessment rates of the other large district municipalities.
The city treasurer also recommends an increase in the dog tax rate, which has been in effect since 2015.
However, this tax is not particularly significant as a source of income - there are 770 dogs registered in Penzberg.
Most recently it brought in around 50,000 euros.
The combing agency proposes an increase from 60 to 80 euros for the first dog and from 100 to 160 euros for each additional dog.
Million dollar hole in Penzberg's financial budget
Markert justifies the recommendations with the financial situation.
In the draft resolution, on the one hand, it refers to the deficit from last year, which must be covered by the 2025 financial year at the latest.
As reported, this involves over 20 million euros.
On the other hand, according to her, there is still a lack of around five million euros in the administrative budget and around ten million euros in the asset budget for the 2024 budget.
According to Markert, the deficit from 2023 is not even taken into account.
According to her, a reduction in expenditure in the administrative budget is only possible to a limited extent, as these are mostly items that cannot be changed, such as personnel costs and district levies.
My news
Auditors criticize Weilheim's town hall reading
Manuela Killinger, the right-hand woman of the Hohenpeißenberg mayor: After almost 25 years, saying goodbye to reading the town hall
“Most deplorable sight in the middle of the city”: graffiti art for the Zörnerhaus facade?read
“Huge dilemma” with the commercial area plan in the Nonnenwald – raised moor may be affected
Federal police check vans on A95 and arrest man wanted across Europe
District saves, city has to bear the consequences read
She also points to the federal government's planned Growth Opportunities Act, which is intended to relieve the burden on companies, but puts a burden on municipalities.
According to Markert, according to the draft law, trade tax losses for municipalities nationwide will amount to around 1.6 billion euros.
It is unclear whether and to what extent the federal government will compensate for this.
The special meeting of the Penzberg City Council will take place on Tuesday, January 23rd, in the meeting room of the city hall.
The public part begins at 6:15 p.m.