In Germany there is a very banal and very effective tax savings model that most people just don’t know about. Just move, or at least pretend to move. Simply rent a mailbox and a desk in a place where taxes are very low for very little money. The only catch with the model: It does not apply to employees in industry, in schools and hospitals, in supermarkets and other shops, in authorities or with the police. It doesn’t apply to employees at all.
In principle, the tax-saving model, which has meanwhile become very popular in certain circles, only applies to well-heeled people; including many millionaires and billionaires. It applies to people who own a company that makes nice profits. And their trade tax, which is calculated primarily based on profits, can easily be reduced significantly by moving to a trade tax haven like Grünwald near Munich. One billion euros should bring the companies and their owners who use this tax-saving model year after year. Other municipalities lack the large amount of money for education, social affairs and other tasks.
What is now happening thousands of times in such tax havens is nothing more than special treatment for, to put it somewhat exaggeratedly, millionaires and billionaires. Or by shareholders, whose company can make more profits and pay higher dividends as a result. All those who don’t have their own company, but whose work is no less important and valuable because of it, don’t benefit. Because they only pay wage or income tax, and because there are no such relocation and tax-saving models for them.
The many companies are also varnished and glued, and that is the vast majority who do not buy a putative bogus address in Grünwald, Monheim am Rhein and other tax havens for a few hundred euros. Who don’t even try to trick the tax authorities in order to enrich themselves to the detriment of everyone. A society is only fair if everyone who can also make their contribution to social interaction. What is too often forgotten, also here.
Neither Scholz nor Söder, neither Merz nor Merkel, neither Habeck nor Lindner do anything against this tax privilege for millionaires; or did something about it. Instead, they have so far watched idly as more and more excesses have occurred in Grünwald, Monheim and Zossen in Brandenburg. Sometimes hundreds of companies can be found under one address. Service providers offer “virtual offices”, dubious company headquarters as a tax-saving model.
Domestic tax havens should also be dried up
That was not how it was intended when towns and municipalities were once given the right to set the trade taxes due themselves. Trade tax is the municipalities’ most important source of income. It is all the more reprehensible that individual cities and communities enrich themselves at the expense of other communities. As a tax haven with the lowest taxes, they tempt hundreds and thousands of companies to buy a tax-saving address, often under dubious circumstances.
Anyone who, like Chancellor and ex-Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, likes to use the word tax justice and wants to dry up foreign tax havens should do the same for domestic tax havens. Together with his government, with Markus Söder and other country leaders. The draining would actually work quite simply: With more staff at the Treasury, so that tax auditors and tax investigators can finally consistently check who is apparently only settling there for appearances. And with new rules that prevent excessive tax dumping by selfish and irresponsible mayors.