Berlin’s mayor is considering examining a profit limitation clause.
(Photo: IMAGO/Bernd Elmenthaler)
Berlin Berlin’s governing mayor, Franziska Giffey, believes that taxing these extra profits is conceivable in order to limit high war-related profits made by energy companies. That said the Vice-Chair of the Prime Ministers’ Conference on Thursday evening after consultations between the federal states and Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.
“If there are excessive profits, which are also there, I find the idea of examining a profit limitation clause interesting,” said Giffey. The question arises to what extent profits can also be taxed. The federal government must examine what is legally possible and have also promised to do so. It cannot be that a crisis situation is exploited to maximize one’s own profit, said the SPD politician.
Giffey referred to an advance by Bremen. The federal state announced on Tuesday that it would submit an application to the Federal Council on June 10 with the aim of imposing a temporary special tax on some of the excess profits made by mineral oil companies as a result of price jumps caused by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
The city-state left it open how the legal and technical design of a special tax should look in detail. The application is intended to ask the federal government to develop a proposal for a legal basis for levying a special levy.
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At their meeting in the afternoon without Scholz, the heads of government of the federal states had asked the federal government in a resolution to take “regulatory measures” to prevent further speculation with oil, gas and electricity and also to approve the previous price increases under antitrust law check over. A problem with the antitrust examination is that the evidence is not so easy, Giffey added.
More: He mixes it up beyond recognition: Olaf Scholz’s speech tactics.