The CDU/CSU parliamentary group is pushing for extensive tax relief for companies. It wants to gradually reduce the corporate tax rate from 15 to 12 percent within three years, completely abolish the solidarity surcharge and introduce a “turbo depreciation.” This is the result of a motion that WELT AM SONNTAG has received in advance. It is on the Bundestag’s agenda for discussion next Friday.
“After 2008, we finally need a new corporate tax reform that reduces the burden on our companies to an internationally competitive level,” says deputy parliamentary group leader Mathias Middelberg. He estimates the annual relief volume of the proposals after the completion of the gradual implementation at 25 to 33 billion euros – this depends on whether the remaining solidarity tax is only abolished for capital companies or for all companies.
The tax concept was written by Fritz Güntzler (CDU), the parliamentary group’s reporter for corporate taxes. “Companies must be able to invest. We are therefore calling for a maximum of 25 percent tax on profits that remain in the company,” he says. According to calculations by the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), the current effective tax burden is just under 29 percent; in other countries, such as France and Great Britain, it is 25 percent.
In order to also ease the burden on partnerships, it should be made easier for them to be taxed like a corporation, i.e. an AG or GmbH. In addition to lower tax rates, the Union is calling for easier handling of losses and improved depreciation options. It is considering a “temporary, strongly degressive turbo depreciation”, as the motion states. The depreciation rate should be a maximum of 30 percent of the acquisition costs instead of the current 20 percent. This should give companies more liquidity in the short term for necessary investments.
The new proposals are based on a position paper from the Union from 2019. At that time, for example, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag wanted to reduce the corporate tax rate from 15 to 10 percent. It is questionable whether the watered-down proposals have a chance of being implemented. Even during the negotiations on the so-called Growth Opportunities Act in the spring, it was not least the Union’s state premiers who, citing the empty coffers of the states, ensured that hardly anything remained of the already small relief that the traffic light coalition wanted.
