Financial equalization: Schäuble has seven billion – SPIEGEL ONLINE

With a multi-billion dollar cash injection German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) wants to move the country to a reorganization of the federal and state finances. Countries should also receive seven billion euros per year, as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” writes, citing a paper from the Ministry of Finance.

So Schäuble offer the countries a higher proportion of the tax. In addition, the federal government should continue to play a portion of their costs for the transport and road construction. Despite the additional expenses of the solidarity surcharge of 2020 to gradually decline. Most countries want to integrate the surcharge in the personal income tax and are thus involved in the billion revenue from it. So far, the flow “Soli” revenues according – last 15 billion euros – solely to the federal government.

If the paper is according to the report to the central basis for negotiations in the talks on the new financial equalization, which expires in 2019 and therefore must be newly regulated. Federal Government and the Prime Minister want to present key points by mid-June.

From Schäuble’s proposal would, according to “SZ” according to the calculations of his house all the countries to benefit, albeit to varying degrees. So Bayern would be about 94 euros more per capita than in the past received, Baden-Württemberg 71 euros. The particularly financially weak states of Saarland and Bremen were 226 euros and 483 euros more per capita. You should get interest assistance to get its budget under control. The worst performers in the original report, the Hamburg (plus 63 euros) and Lower Saxony (plus 42 euros).

Schäuble’s proposal shall address the differing interests of the countries, according to the report. So the Minister of Finance would split the revenue from the sales tax in a new practice among countries. He consider a claim North Rhine-Westphalia. The eastern countries would benefit if the financial situation of their communities should be better reflected in the calculations of fiscal equalization. Donor countries Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Bayern come against the Minister, by proposing a scheme under which these countries have to give less of their tax revenues than before.

However, the design run into opposition from the Eastern states. Brandenburg’s Minister President Dietmar Woidke (SPD) wrote, according to the newspaper on behalf of the East German Government a letter to Schäuble, to raise an objection to the proposed reforms. In it he criticizes, it is not acceptable that Eastern countries eight billion euros would permanently withdrawn by the proposed new distribution of sales tax. In spite of the promised increase the easterners feared obvious that the reform would lead them to budget gaps.