German Economy Minister Rules Out More Tax Hikes For Companies

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

15 January 2003

The Reuters news service on Tuesday reported that Germany's Economy and Labour Minister, Wolfgang Clement has assured the country's businesses that he will not be increasing their tax burden any further in the near future.

In an attempt to bring its budget deficit under the 3% ceiling required by the EU Stability and Growth Pact, the German government has recently introduced a raft of unpopular tax increases, including increases to fuel and energy taxes, higher pension contributions for companies and employees, VAT hikes on some products to the full 16%, and the reduction of tax breaks for homeowners.

However, speaking at an energy industry conference in Berlin yesterday, Mr Clement announced that:

'The main goal of my economic policy is to safeguard growth and employment. Therefore I am committed to an economic policy which rules out further burdens for companies - taxes and contributions - to a strengthening of smaller businesses, to the empowerment of our technology and our foreign economic policy as well as [to] a drastic reduction of bureaucracy.'

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