Starting today, experts will spend three days discussing what tax revenue the federal, state and local governments can expect. What is clear is that there will be less to distribute instead of more.
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr sees no scope for additional spending in view of the upcoming tax estimate. “It is certainly the case that the trees no longer grow into the sky,” Dürr told the Berlin Playbook on the “Politico” portal. “Now cannot be the time when the motto is: There is little money anyway, so we can make full use of it. Those days must be over. Sound budgeting is the order of the day,” warned the FDP politician.
From today to Thursday, experts from the federal government, the leading economic research institutes, the Federal Statistical Office, the Bundesbank as well as the Council of Experts, the states and municipalities will be meeting in Gotha, Thuringia, to estimate taxes. The basis of their forecast is economic development.
The federal government recently lowered the forecast. It now expects economic output to decline by 0.2 percent this year. In the spring she had expected a slight increase in gross domestic product of 0.3 percent.
Union assumes there will be significant revenue gaps
Finance Minister Christian Lindner will announce the results of the estimate on Thursday (3 p.m.). The tax estimators’ forecast is an important basis for the final discussions on the 2025 federal budget and also for the state budgets that are currently being drawn up.
The Union assumes that the tax estimators will correct revenue expectations significantly downwards. Parliamentary group vice-president Mathias Middelberg told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” on Monday that, according to his calculations, the federal budget for the coming year was missing 43 billion euros. The CSU financial expert Sebastian Brehm also spoke in the “Augsburger Allgemeine” of an expected coverage gap of “a good 40 billion euros”. Brehm predicted that this would further aggravate the financial situation of red-green-yellow and thus also tensions in the coalition.
Source: Stern
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