Enlarge image
Shopping street in Neuss: Revenue from sales tax in particular rose sharply
Photo: Michael Gstettenbauer / IMAGO
The deficit in public coffers more than halved in the first nine months of last year compared to the previous year.
Overall, the federal, state, local government and social security funds from January to September 2022 were 65.7 billion euros below expenditure, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
In the same period of 2021, the government deficit was still 150.2 billion euros.
On the one hand, during the corona pandemic, the state had paid significant amounts of money to companies that had suffered losses as a result of the measures to contain the infection.
On the other hand, the tax revenue was also significantly lower due to the restrictions on consumption and targeted reductions.
Both have led to extraordinarily high government deficits.
As early as 2020, the minus was almost 140 billion euros.
In the first three quarters of 2022, with the end of most of the corona measures, state revenues increased by 9.1 percent to 1261.2 billion euros.
The increases in sales and import taxes were particularly large;
At the federal level, the income from this increased by 22.2 percent, at the federal states by 18.4 percent.
The social security funds recorded a five percent increase in premium income.
On the other hand, the state increased spending only slightly by 1.5 percent to 1,326.9 billion euros.
The increase was thus below the rate of inflation.
This was largely due to the expiring corona aid for companies and lower spending on short-time work.
However, at 22.5 billion euros, the state had to spend 24.6 percent more on interest than a year earlier.
Looking at the individual levels of public budgets, the results turned out to be very different.
At 79.4 billion euros, the federal deficit was significantly higher than the general government deficit.
The social security funds had 7.8 billion euros more expenditure than income, and the municipal budgets were almost balanced at minus 0.8 billion euros.
The federal states even recorded surpluses of 22.4 billion euros.
fdi/Reuters