German Conservative Challenger Details Tax Reform Plans

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

06 September 2002

CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union) challenger to Gerhard Schoder's Chancellorship, Edmund Stoiber revealed this week that if the conservatives are voted to power in the September 22 general elections, they intend to reintroduce the capital gains tax on the corporate disposal of industrial shareholdings which was removed by the SPD/Green coalition government in 2000.

Mr Stoiber has broached the subject several times before, and the CDU/CSU election manifesto stresses the need for a re-examination of the current CGT exemption, but no really concrete announcements have been made on the issue until recently.

In an interview with the German weekly Stern magazine, published on Thursday, Mr Stoiber explained that the conservatives feel that the balance between large corporations and SMEs in terms of sharing the tax burden needs to be restored:

'Big and small companies must be treated equally when it comes to profits from divestments of stakes in companies: either all get the tax exemption or all are subject to a uniform tax of about 15%,' he told the magazine.

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