The traffic light coalition wants to quickly launch a third relief package. Pensioners should now also be taken into account in it. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced this. On Tuesday, the cabinet meets for a two-day closed conference in Meseberg Castle. When Scholz, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) appear before the press on Wednesday, at least key points of the package could be announced.
The two most well-known measures from the first two packages expire the following day – the fuel discount and the nine-euro ticket. There is no settlement yet, but the estimated relief effect was more than six billion euros. The energy price flat rate of 300 euros, which most employees will probably receive with their payslips in September, has a further relief effect of around nine billion euros.
In view of massively rising energy prices and the expectation that inflation has not yet peaked, the only thing left to do is decide on a third package for October 1st. For purely practical reasons, there are other flat-rate direct payments. They are the quickest to implement. A second energy price lump sum is therefore to be expected (politicians have recently started talking about energy money).
According to Scholz, it should spread more widely, i.e. at least also apply to pensioners without additional income in a permanent job and students without additional income. The self-employed usually only receive the relief via tax returns in the coming year. Lindner had recently referred to the high pension increase of 5.4 percent in the west and 6.1 percent in the east. But this does not compensate for inflation.
A lump sum payment has the advantage that it has an effect on taxation that is perceived as fair. Low earners get the full amount if they are below the tax limit. In the broad middle, the tax rate increases with income, and towards the top there is less and less net income – with high earners also receiving 174 euros in the top tax rate.
However, at least the SPD and the Greens have declared their will to make targeted payments that have a greater effect further down the line. “We have to help those who cannot help themselves and who have no reserves,” SPD leader Saskia Esken said on ZDF on Friday. The threat of additional payments for heating costs due to the high gas prices also poses a threat to the existence of some people – the package should relieve precisely this group. Green parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge recently said that those with small pensions should be the focus.
But the coalition is also thinking about commuters, even if the distance allowance has already been increased retrospectively as of January 1st. In view of the end of the tank discount (an FDP proposal), SPD Secretary General Kevin Kühnert, of all people, brought motorists back into the conversation as recipients of relief. Petrol prices per liter of more than two euros can soon be expected again, which is simply too much for “many people who are absolutely dependent on their car,” as Kühnert told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. Whether an extension of the fuel discount and nine-euro ticket is part of the package? So far, the coalition partners have not sounded that way. But the second energy price flat rate could be significantly higher than the first with a view to this.
The economist Monika Schnitzer, a member of the Economic Wise Men, the government’s advisory body, named a sum of 500 euros on Friday. In the “Rheinische Post” she also advocated financing this relief by further suspending the debt brake. But Lindner has so far ruled that out, also with the argument that half a year after the start of the Ukraine war, it can no longer serve as an acute emergency that allows the exception. Schnitzer, on the other hand, speaks of a “temporary shock” – and that is exactly what is intended to be done by temporarily lifting the debt brake.
But does the coalition have to do that at all? Tax revenue this year has so far been above plan, not least in the case of sales tax. There is no confirmation of this, but the reduction in VAT on the gas levy from 19 to seven percent can probably be offset by the fact that natural gas is so much more expensive than in the previous year – which significantly increases revenue from sales tax, even from the reduced one. A third relief package could also be financed from excess income.
In addition, the government has approved a large buffer in the budget because of the Ukraine crisis and the ongoing pandemic. The question then is whether and how credit authorizations can be used to finance further relief. Schnitzer proposed a debt-financed special fund for the energy money, i.e. a procedure analogous to the Bundeswehr special fund, which was set up to finance the unforeseen increase in spending by the Bundeswehr.
