Expensive refueling: The government also wants to relieve citizens of petrol costs.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The relief package planned by the federal government will lead to bureaucracy costs of more than 800 million euros. This emerges from a note from the Ministry of Finance, which is available to the Handelsblatt. After that, the payment of the energy price flat rate proves to be complicated and expensive.
The cabinet passed the relief package on Wednesday. The largest item is the energy price lump sum: All employees who are subject to income tax are to receive a one-time payment of 300 euros from the state because of the increased heating and electricity costs.
For employees, it is paid in September with the payslip. The Ministry of Finance estimates a total of around 13.8 billion euros. However, the one-off payment must be taxed by the recipients, which is why the bottom line is around 10.4 billion euros.
This relief is offset by high bureaucracy costs, which could add up to almost one billion euros. The 2.6 million employers in Germany are supposed to transfer the lump sum to their employees with their payslips, which entails a technical conversion effort. “All in all, the economy will incur a one-off compliance cost of around 225 million euros,” says the template from the Ministry of Finance.
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The department of Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) estimates the burden on the tax administration of the federal states to be even greater. She has to check the accounts and also expects an increased need for advice. The Ministry of Finance expects a “one-off compliance cost of around 550 million euros”. There are other costs that cannot be quantified.
The officials even fear that the tax offices will be overburdened when processing tax returns in the coming year: “The considerable one-time expense for the tax offices of the expected magnitude is likely to jeopardize the timely implementation of the 2023 assessment campaign,” says the paper. The IT effort in the tax administration is only “possible at the expense of other, also priority tasks”.
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Tax experts share the fears. “The payment of the energy price flat rate by the employer leads to one-off costs for the company that are not inconsiderable,” says Frank Hechtner from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The entire process of payment and reimbursement via the wage tax will only work if the companies can implement this fully automatically. “The previous cost estimate for the conversion of almost one billion euros could be significantly higher.”
Danger of double payment
Finance Minister Lindner emphasized that the proposal for the energy price flat rate came from the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Finance is now implementing it “as bureaucratically friendly as possible”. The relief package is already being discussed in the Bundestag. At an expert hearing on Monday, there was also criticism of the possible administrative burden.
The FDP finance expert Markus Herbrand said that in the course of the parliamentary deliberations one would try to reduce the bureaucracy. We also want to avoid abuse. Experts like Hechtner had warned in the hearing that there could be double payments in certain constellations, such as mini-jobs and people with several employers.
In addition to the lump sum, the traffic light package also includes a reduction in the energy tax on fuel, a child bonus and an increase in the basic allowance. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) put the volume at 30 billion euros.
More: Relief packages from the federal government for high energy prices: the wrong people are benefiting