The Federal Government finds no solution to the agreed income test for the basic pension. The biggest problem is the recording of capital income, as Der Spiegel learned from the participating ministries of labor and finance.
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According to the coalition decision, the income from capital assets should be taken into account when granting the new social benefit. However, the required data are not available to the tax authorities, because interest income is now generally recorded as a flat-rate with the so-called final withholding tax. Who earns how much with his investments is not known to the tax authorities.
Developing a procedure whereby banks and financial services providers automatically report the data to the tax authorities would require "at least two years," the two Social Democratic-led ministries said. A so-called manual solution is also excluded. For this, the authorities would have to "hire several thousand civil servants," says Alexander Gunkel, CEO of the German Pension Insurance.
In addition, the concept raises privacy issues. Because also capital income of spouses are to be considered, they could possibly contradict the data comparison, fear the Ministerialen.
If the government does not answer the questions, it would first have to introduce the basic pension without examining the capital income. It is not excluded that the bill will therefore no longer be presented before Christmas, it says in the ministry of Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil.
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