The Grand Coalition has come to terms on one of the main controversial issues - and the compromise on land rent has revived a taxpayer revenge whose fate has already been sealed dozens of times: the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). With such a levy on stock sales Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to occupy the majority of the 1.5 billion euro, which the federation annually additionally the pension fund zuzuschießen, in order to finance the new welfare benefit.
Scholz wants to bring in a billion euros with the new tax, the rest must Social Minister Hubertus Heil from his budget. With expenditures of scarcely 150 billion euro per year in the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs salvation is likely to find it in the petty cash.
More problematic will be the introduction of the Financial Transaction Tax. For years, politics has been debating whether the speculators levy should come and how it should be designed. France has such a tax, Britain too, but not Germany. But their advent has been planned several times. The imagination of politics seems boundless, for which good purposes the extra money is to be used. So now for the basic pension.
Main task Gap filler
A few months ago, the new tax, due to be introduced in 2021, was supposed to feed the common budget of the Eurozone. Previously, the tax was designed to compensate public finances for the billions that governments used to rescue banks during the financial crisis. Then it was discussed as a financing instrument that could finance growth programs in troubling Eurozone countries. Later, supporters came up with the idea to increase their spending on development aid. With the FTT, the finance minister theoretically has a veritable all-purpose weapon.
Their main task in recent years, however, was to give the placeholder and Gaps. Whenever Scholz is faced with a task in which he does not know how to finance it, the Financial Transaction Tax offers itself. So also this time. Nobody knows whether the 2021 revenue will flow from the new tax.
1.5 billion are not hard to find
All that is certain is that the money is needed if the black-red coalition actually manages to implement its compromise. Until then, Scholz has time to get the FTT off the ground. If he does not succeed, it is not a drama. Then he has to raise money in another way. He could do that, even without raising taxes or introducing new ones.
Maybe the then better running economy flushes the necessary money into the coffers. Or the persistent low-interest phase brings him one or the other discharge. Or Scholz simply cuts a few superfluous subsidies - there are at least 31 billion euros to get. Or he uses a combination of all that.
The federal government spends around 350 billion euros every year, and a steady stream of billions is added as tax revenues continue to rise. A sum of 1.5 billion euros to raise, there appears as a manageable challenge. Either way, financial transaction tax or not, the lack of money, the compromise on the basic pension will not fail.
