Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) plans to postpone the income tax rate early next year.

He is concerned with avoiding a creeping additional burden on citizens.

Its leverage is the cold progression report that the federal government submits every two years.

In it, she explores the question of how much the tax burden increases when wages rise in line with prices.

This is the much-lamented cold progression.

The most recent report is from October 2020. What the experts calculate has always been the basis of legislation in the past.

But the red-green-yellow coalition agreement contains no statement on cold progression.

This suggests that there may still be a struggle as to how much this is actually offset.

Manfred Schaefers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Looking back, even low inflation can create quite a large burden on taxpayers.

The federal government had calculated a price increase of 0.47 percent for 2020 and 1.17 percent for the following year.

She estimated the effect of cold progression at around 2.1 billion euros or 7.7 billion euros.

In fact, consumer prices in Germany increased by 3.1 percent in 2021 – on average over the year.

In December, the rate was even 5.3 percent.

With the second Family Relief Act, the basic allowance and the other key figures of the income tax rate for 2021 and 2022 were postponed.

For the first year, the legislature was somewhat more generous than the report required.

Citizens were also relieved of around 1.2 billion euros.

At present, the experts in the Ministry are preparing the fifth report on cold progression.

He shouldn't be finished yet.

In view of the rising inflation, it is foreseeable that there will be more at stake than last time.

Dealing with the gap that has recently opened up because inflation turned out to be higher than expected is politically particularly tricky.

Lindner is thinking of making up for this later as well.

But that should be anything but a political sure-fire success.