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Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP)
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
Taxpayers should be able to fully deduct their pension contributions from next year.
This emerges from the draft for the annual tax law, which was announced on Friday.
It states that a “complete special expense deduction for pension expenses” should be possible from 2023.
According to the current legal situation, this would not happen until 2025.
"We deliberately prefer this step - because relief is particularly important in times of high inflation," said Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) of the dpa news agency.
At the same time, the new regulation creates more clarity in the tax system.
"This serves to avoid double taxation," explained Lindner.
In May 2021, the Federal Fiscal Court criticized the double taxation, i.e. the taxation of both the income from which pension contributions are paid and the subsequent pension payment.
Since, according to the court, such double taxation threatened many pensioners in the future, a reform was necessary.
According to calculations by the Ministry of Finance, the affected citizens will be relieved by around 3.2 billion euros in 2023.
In 2024, it is therefore still about 1.76 billion euros.
Pensions are only taxed when they are paid out
In the future, pensions will only be taxed in the payment phase in old age.
Before that, the expenses for the old-age provision can be claimed for tax purposes.
The conversion includes pensions from the statutory pension insurance, the agricultural old-age fund, the professional pension institutions and from basic pension contracts, so-called Rürup pensions.
The president of the social association VdK, Verena Bentele, does not think the plans are over.
Double taxation is not completely ruled out, she criticized.
The background is that pensions in old age will be fully taxed from 2040.
Taxpayers who have had to pay tax on their contributions in recent years and who are pensioners in 2040 would be asked to pay twice.
Bentele therefore called for the full taxation of pensions to be postponed from 2040 to 2070.
mgo/AFP/dpa