There are still a few fishing families on Lake Starnberg. They don’t make millions selling whitefish or char, but their land, which they have owned for generations, should be worth millions. Do they perhaps have to take out loans if the wealth tax is reintroduced under SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz? Or the elderly couple who many years ago inherited a plot of land from their parents in the Fünfseenland and built a house on it, which is of course worth many times over?
“If we need care, we want to sell it. But if we have to pay property tax, can we still afford a nursing home?” Asks the worried man Norbert Walter-Borjans, who is stopping off in Gauting on Tuesday evening on his campaign tour. The SPD federal chairman deliberately chose the topic of the evening in Germany’s second-richest district: “Who should pay for that?”
The pandemic and its consequences, coping with climate change, investments in digitization, road construction, mobility, education, childcare, care and housing are a heavy burden on the federal, state and local governments. Who should pay for that? “The loans are not the problem,” said Walter-Borjans in the Gautinger Bosco.
The problem is all those “who wriggle their way out and have paid no taxes at all for decades”. One percent of the population owned 35 percent of assets in Germany, said the former finance minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. And this one percent should be asked to pay. A wealth tax would add “many billions”. In return, the SPD wants to give 95 percent of the population tax relief, that is, everyone who makes less than 200,000 euros in net profit a year.
“We do not want a tax on the market value”, Walter-Borjans reassured the insecure Starnberg property owners. Nobody has to take out a loan to pay taxes. The wealth tax should not burden anyone, but should be the means “that the very rich get richer more slowly,” said the federal chairman. No handicraft business should suffer because of a wealth tax, it was just “scare-mongering” the political opponents. “Strong shoulders should carry more than weak ones,” is the motto of the SPD.
Carmen Wegge, the SPD direct candidate for the constituency of Starnberg, Landsberg, Germering, was pleased that Norbert Walter-Borjans, a financial expert, appeared. She did a year of tax law during her legal clerkship and was “happy when it was over, as complicated as it is,” said the lawyer.
Walter-Borjans also answered questions from the audience on the defense budget – “we want to equip, not arm” -, money laundering – “a big problem” -, the speed limit on highways – “yes” – and foreign policy – “who will ensure peace wants to, must also talk to the corrupt and criminals “.
Then the federal chairman had to go on, not without first praising Carmen Wegge as “young, fit, fresh and motivated” – she embodies exactly what the SPD parliamentary group needs.