Interviewed by
Thomas Balbier
It’s that time again: Bavaria is preparing a lawsuit against the nationwide financial equalization. For the third time since the late 1990s, the state government wants to go to the Federal Constitutional Court to slow down what it considers to be a disproportionate redistribution of tax money. Bavaria and Hesse had already sued in Karlsruhe in 1999 and 2013. But the mechanism that transfers taxpayer money from financially strong to weaker federal states was basically preserved. Worse still, after each reorganization it got further out of joint, criticizes the Nuremberg finance scientist Thiess Büttner. The holder of the Chair of Economics at the Friedrich-Alexander University advises the Federal Ministry of Finance and explains in an interview why the equalization system is paradoxical and why the Bavarians must feel ridiculous.