The gas levy has been overturned, and a €200 billion aid package is on its way. In order to relieve consumers in the face of high energy prices, the federal government will reduce VAT on gas and district heating to 7 percent from October. In addition, there should be 3,000 euros in tax-free bonuses for employees.
In order to cushion the rising energy prices, from October there will be less value added tax on natural gas deliveries and district heating. The Bundestag decided that the tax rate would be temporarily reduced from 19 to 7 percent because of the energy crisis. This should apply until the end of March 2024. Finance Minister Christian Lindner justified the tax cut as gas prices continued to rise. “And the state must not profit from the fact that people’s lives are becoming more expensive.”
The traffic light coalition called on energy suppliers to pass on the full amount of the tax cut to consumers. “Unfortunately, the state cannot guarantee that it will be passed on to consumers,” admitted the financial politician of the Greens, Katharina Beck. “And it also relieves those who consume a lot and tend to have more money than those who consume little and tend to have less money.” Nevertheless, the overall package is right.
According to comparison portal Verivox, prices would have to fall by 7.3 percent if they were passed on in full to consumers. For a family with a gas consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours, this means a saving of 366 euros per year. The opposition Union criticized that a tripling or quadrupling of the gas price would only be a drop in the bucket. The bottom line is that it can even happen that a household, even with the low tax rate, pays even more VAT due to the high prices than before with low prices and a higher tax rate.
About half of all apartments in Germany are heated with gas, around 14 percent of households, especially tenants in eastern Germany, use district heating. According to the Ministry of Finance, the state will take in around 13 billion euros less by 2024 as a result of the tax cut. The tax cut was originally launched so that the state would not earn money from the controversial gas surcharge for all gas customers. This levy was intended to help prop up struggling gas importers who had previously built their business on cheap Russian gas.
On Thursday, however, the federal government decided to overturn the gas levy and to stabilize the three companies affected in other ways. The traffic light coalition is still sticking to the VAT reduction in order to further relieve consumers.
Lindner also defended the 200 billion euro aid package with which the federal government wants to finance price caps on electricity and gas, among other things. It is Germany’s response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s energy war. Putin wants to shake up prosperity in Germany so that the citizens show less solidarity with Ukraine. But he will fail with that, emphasized Lindner.
Union parliamentary group leader Mathias Middelberg criticized that at the present time the package that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had dubbed “double boom” was “nothing more than a debt boom”. Because what the government wants to finance with it is completely unclear, there is no calculation or basis for calculation. In fact, there is still no concept for the planned price cap. A commission is to develop the gas price brake in mid-October. It is unclear, for example, whether only basic consumption is kept artificially cheap or the entire use of gas. Critics fear that there will then no longer be any incentive to save gas.
In order to further cushion the high inflation, employers can also pay their employees tax-free bonuses of up to 3,000 euros in the coming years. The Bundestag decided that such bonuses will not be subject to income tax until the end of 2024. However, it is unclear how many employers will make use of the opportunity and actually pay out bonuses.
Employer President Rainer Dulger had recently emphasized that not all companies could afford the one-off payment. Even during the Corona crisis there was the possibility of a tax-free premium. However, it is not known how many employers paid them and in what amount. The prerequisite for tax exemption is that the money is paid in addition to wages. In addition, the employer must make it clear that this is a lump sum in connection with the price increases. In the case of social benefit recipients, the premium should not be taken into account as income.
