The German Chancellor, the conservative Friedrich Merz, has defended his plan to introduce in the coming months the concept of “voluntary active retirement”, an offer to the most veteran employees of the companies to continue working, and has rejected tax increases to the highest income to cover the budgetary holes faced by Germany.
On the other hand, the Minister of Finance, the Social Democrat Lars Klingbeil, has indicated that “all the options are on the table”, so he did not rule out raising taxes to the highest income and the rich to close a predictable hole of more than 30,000 million euros in the budget of 2027.
Merz, whose conservative alliance CDU/CSU forms coalition with the Social Democratic party, has applauded the discrepancy but remembered that the government agreement does not contemplate this kind of tax increases.
On the “active retirement” agreed in the coalition pact, pensioners should be able to win up to 2,000 euros per month free of taxes, although the company is waiting for the announcement of the bill that will be presented after the summer by the Minister of Social Affairs, the Social Democrat Bärbel Bas.
“We want to try voluntarily,” Merz explained. Working life must be extended in general, “but this applies in particular to those who can and want to do it. And now we have to see what happens.”
