It is the week of red-green-yellow preliminary decisions.

In the course of Wednesday, the working groups of the potential coalition partners will present their result papers - it is already foreseeable that it will not be possible to finance everything that is desired.

The new tax estimate will not change this fundamental statement, even if it suggests that there will be considerable additional income for the tax authorities.

Manfred Schäfers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

According to the calculation of the Federal Ministry of Finance, additional income compared to the May estimate of around 30 billion euros per year is to be expected. Experience has shown that around 40 percent of the revenue comes from the federal government. This Tuesday, the members of the working group come together to go through the expected revenue for each tax and each year.

It is a nice coincidence: On Thursday, Olaf Scholz (SPD) will present the results of their work, after all, he is still finance minister.

The presumably next Chancellor must then ask himself what can be planned and what cannot be financed.

It remains to be seen whether he will answer without evading.

After all, he would lean far out of the window with it.

It is more likely that he will refer to the steering committee of the three parties, which has to combine the results from the working groups into an overall concept so that Scholz can be elected as the successor to Angela Merkel (CDU) at the beginning of December as planned.

6.2 billion euros "need for financial policy action"

The prospect of additional income will make the work of the top negotiators easier, but the whole thing is by no means a sure-fire success. Even slightly higher revenues from carbon dioxide pricing, which are now expected, do not change this basic statement. There are several reasons for this. It is an open secret that Scholz's financial planning does not contain everything that should realistically be there. In the case of large individual plans, there are declining approaches. Although a reserve of around 48 billion euros can be used, there remains a gap in Scholz's finance plan of around 6.2 billion euros in 2025 - he calls it the "need for financial policy action".A better utilized economy also reduces the permissible new borrowing - at least as long as the rules for calculating the cyclical component are not changed. In addition, higher inflation is not only contributing to growing tax revenues, it will also pull spending upwards.

In 2022, with reference to the pandemic, the debt brake is to be suspended again so that higher new borrowing will be possible.

In an interview with the FAZ last week, the FDP chairman Christian Lindner opposed the idea of ​​significantly expanding the new debt in the coming year in order to create a cushion for the rest of the legislative period: "The already planned net borrowing of I think 100 billion euros in the coming year, to put it cautiously, is already sufficient. ”The permissible new debt drops drastically from the year after next.

The financial plan provides for net borrowing of 5.4 billion euros for 2023 and around 12 billion euros in each of the following years.