Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz has criticized the SPD’s tax plans and once again rejected higher debts. If the SPD decides, as at its board meeting, to relieve 95 percent of taxpayers from income tax and to finance this through higher taxation of the top one percent, then their tax rate must rise to 60 percent, said Merz on Sunday evening on the ARD program Caren Miosga. Otherwise the bill won’t add up. The SPD’s old pattern is evident: “More state, more debt, more bureaucracy, higher taxes for the rich, as the SPD always likes to call it,” criticized Merz. Then you don’t have to be surprised about the migration of companies to neighboring countries in Europe.
Merz rejected the accusation that he was demanding “respect for higher earners”. “These are not the higher earners. These are the top performers in our society,” he said, referring to medium-sized businesses and craftsmen.
At the same time, the CDU leader once again rejected a reform of the debt brake. “I remain convinced that the debt must not continue to rise because we are simply putting too much of a burden on the next generation,” he said. The opposition leader admitted that the states had a particular problem with the debt brake because, unlike the federal government, they were not allowed to take on additional debt when the economy was weak. “You can of course talk to the states about such a question.” But Germany does not primarily have an income problem, but rather a spending problem.
