FDP wants tax advantages for overtime and skilled workers from abroad

Enlarge image

Time clock in Berlin (symbolic image): “Make you want to work overtime”

Photo: Arno Burgi/dpa

In view of weakening economic growth, the FDP is proposing tax advantages for overtime. In order to make individual performance worthwhile again, a limited number of overtime hours and paid overtime bonuses could be made tax-free, according to a resolution by the FDP executive committee on Monday. It is entitled “Performance and work must be worth it again”.

Previously, party leader and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner had repeatedly spoken out in favor of promoting overtime. You have to “make people want to work overtime,” said Lindner on the ARD program “Caren Miosga.”

In its resolution, the FDP also calls for wage and income taxes to be automatically adjusted to inflation and to make the employment of older workers more attractive. The method of calculating citizens’ money must be put to the test. The sanctions for citizens' benefit recipients who stubbornly refuse to do reasonable work should be tightened. Additional income rules for citizens' benefit would have to be made more performance-based, taking into account child allowances and housing benefit.

The resolution also calls for tax incentives for foreign skilled workers. "For foreign employees, a portion of their gross wages could be made tax-free in the first three years." A graduated tax-free amount would create a bureaucratically easy-to-implement financial incentive for foreign skilled workers to come to Germany, according to the justification.

Opposition to the plans came from the Taxpayers' Association (BdSt), which is actually considered to be close to the FDP. “The uniformity of taxation is important, also against the background of justice,” said BSt President Reiner Holznagel. “In this respect, I don’t think the idea is feasible or good either.”

Germany does need skilled workers from abroad. “But if they are here, then they must be treated equally with those who are already there,” Holznagel continued. "That's why this idea should be put to rest quickly."

dab/dpa