“That is historical”, it says from the Mainz town hall. The corona vaccine developer BioNTech is becoming a bubbling tax source for the highly indebted city.
The surplus in the Mainz budget this year is expected to be around 1.09 billion euros. Mayor Michael Ebling (SPD) and Finance Director Günter Beck (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) announced this at a press conference. The majority of the income is likely to be trade tax payments from BioNTech. Estimates assume around one billion euros.
In the coming year, the city of Mainz expects again a surplus of almost 500 million euros. Beck said that the ADD supervisory and service directorate will recognize the city of Mainz as debt-free at the end of next year. The current debt level in Mainz is around 1.3 billion euros.
Mainz wants to reduce business tax drastically
Due to the additional income, the city of Mainz is planning to reduce the trade tax assessment rate from 440 to 310 percentage points. This would relieve the companies in Mainz by a good 350 million euros in the next year alone, said Beck. The city council is due to vote on it in November.
Mainz wants to invest in the future with the tax revenue from BioNTech, among other things. The city aims to become the center for biotechnology in the next ten years. Researchers in the field of biotechnology should settle in Mainz and work together in a network.
“The miracle of Mainz”
For this purpose, 30 hectares of land and a lot of money are to be made available for the infrastructure in the coming years. A company is to be founded as early as April next year so that interested companies have a contact person. The city plans to provide new laboratory space in the TechnologieZentrum Mainz (TZM) by the end of 2024. 5,000 new jobs are to be created in ten years. The city of Mainz is on its way to becoming a global center for cancer and aging research, according to Ebling and Beck.
BioNTech with billions in profit
BioNTech announced on Tuesday that the company had made a profit of over 3 billion euros in the third quarter thanks to the vaccine business – after a loss of 210 million euros a year ago.