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Seniors on a park bench: the tax authorities get more money back
Photo: Felix Kästle/ dpa
Less net than gross - this also applies to pensioners in Germany: Income tax is due for more and more pension benefits.
Last year, almost 65 percent of the statutory, private or company pensions were part of the taxable income - a total of 227 billion euros, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office.
The share has thus increased by 9.7 percentage points since 2015.
The background to this is the new regulation of the taxation of retirement income from 2005. Since then, the taxable portion of the pensions for the respective new pensioners has increased by two percentage points annually from 50 percent at the time.
One hundred percent will be achieved in 2040.
Conversely, younger employees can deduct more and more expenses for old-age provision from their taxes.
According to the statistics office, it is not yet known how many pensioners will pay income tax for 2021.
According to the latest data, a third of pensioners paid income tax in 2018, affecting 7.3 million pensioners.
Compared to 2017, the proportion increased by two and a half percentage points or approximately 590,000 people.
In 2021, 21.9 million people received benefits of around 350 billion euros from statutory, private or company pensions.
mic/AFP
