Status: 02.07.2021 6:40 p.m.
SPD chancellor candidate Scholz is said to have hired experts from the finance ministry to work out a tax concept for his election campaign. This is what the “Spiegel” reports. The ministry and the SPD contradicted the representation.
Finance minister and SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz is coming under pressure: According to information from the magazine “Spiegel”, he is said to have used the staff and resources of his department to work out the tax reform concept for his election campaign.
According to the report, two weeks ago the ministry’s management issued an internal work order to develop a concept for reforming the income tax. The officials turned on a publicly funded institute for preparatory work. This mobilized public resources for the election campaign, writes the “Spiegel”. That violates the law.
According to “Spiegel”, the concept that the civil servants and external experts worked out together provides that single people with a gross income of up to EUR 100,000 are tax relieved. In the case of married people, the relief applies to double income. The values correspond to a taxable income of 90,000 or 180,000 euros. From these values, a new top tax rate of 45 percent should also apply.
“Served to form the opinion of the minister”
A ministry spokeswoman rejected the presentation. The elaborations served “to form the opinion of the minister” and were “not carried out on behalf of or at the request of a party”. She announced that it was “customary for a ministry to prepare technical reports for the minister,” including on the subject of tax policy.
“Currently, a number of different variants of the reform of the income tax rate have been calculated,” said the spokeswoman. To this end, the ministry is working on the basis of a framework agreement with an external institute.
An SPD spokeswoman announced that the SPD did not yet have a final tax concept. Positions on tax policy formulated in the party’s future program were based on preparatory work by a commission of the SPD party executive. Specific details are still being worked on. The SPD falls back on the expertise of many.
“Violation of the political party law”
The Düsseldorf law professor Sophie Schönberger rated Scholz’s approach as a “violation of the law on political parties” because it was a matter of “covert party financing”. Furthermore, the procedure violates the constitutionally guaranteed equal opportunities for the parties, she told the “Spiegel”.
The opposition asked for clarification on the matter. “Scholz must disclose whether the party law has possibly been violated and state resources have been used for the SPD tax concept,” said the left-wing financial expert Fabio Di Masi the news portal t-online. FDP parliamentary deputy Christian Dürr accused the minister of abusing his ministry for election campaign purposes.