How often do job centers pay people too much money because they have assets?
A response from the federal government to a request from the Greens in the Bundestag provides the answer.
Only a few
Hartz IV recipients
have been proven to
withhold capital income
or
assets
and thus unjustifiably obtain Hartz IV benefits. This shows a response from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to a request from the Greens in the Bundestag, as reported by the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
and the
German Press Agency (dpa)
.
According to the reports,
in 2020
the
job centers found
in only 945 out of 1.6 million cases examined that they had paid too much unemployment benefit II because the beneficiary's assets were too high.
In 78,382 cases, there were rather
overpayments
due to concealed income from
mini-jobs *
or employment subject to social insurance, as dpa writes;
a total of 3.9 million Hartz IV recipients were listed as "employable".
According to the ministry's response, a total of EUR 680 per case was overpaid last year, according to the two reports.
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Additional earnings rules in the Hartz IV system under fire
The Green MP Sven Lehmann, who made the request, said according to dpa: “The distorted image of wealthy Hartz IV recipients has nothing to do with reality.” This is mostly about people “who work and generate income themselves want".
He demanded: Anyone who earns something extra "should be rewarded and not punished".
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The
additional earnings rules in the Hartz IV system
have been criticized by experts for many years, as the SZ writes: They considered the incentive to take a part-time or full-time job to be too low, because a large part of the income is immediately withdrawn from Hartz IV recipients.
Many would therefore prefer to combine Hartz IV with a mini job, it says in the report - this leaves them with more.
(ahu) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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