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Seamstress at work: when will retirement come?
Photo: Galdric Penarroja / Addictive Stock / IMAGO
The CDU has met with its proposal for tax-free additional income opportunities for pensioners up to 2000 euros per month on broad criticism. Such a model "would benefit above all already well-off senior citizens," said the deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Dagmar Schmidt to the "Tagesspiegel". The proposal favors professors and lawyers and discriminates against those who have worked hard physically for decades, such as roofers or nurses.
CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann had presented the proposal for an "active pension" on Friday. He also sees this as a means of eliminating the shortage of skilled workers.
The FDP labor market politician Carl-Julius Cronenberg also expressed his disapproval: "Incentives to employ full pensioners are reasonable," Cronenberg told the Tagesspiegel. However, it is not clear why Linnemann is "proposing an instrument that will never be available to millions of employees, such as craftsmen, and which also further complicates the already complicated tax law".
Push for extraordinary pension increase
Left Party parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch told the newspaper that those who want to work as pensioners should do so: "The CDU concept of active pensions, however, should also serve to get people used to the work until death." According to Bartsch, it would be more important than tax exemption for the earned income of pensioners to "increase pensions extraordinarily and additionally by ten percent on January 1, 2024". The level of pensions must be increased and pension taxation for small and medium-sized pensions must be stopped.
Pensioners who worked voluntarily, however, should have high tax exemption limits, said the Left Party parliamentary group leader. "That would be reasonable, especially in view of the shortage of skilled workers."
hpi/AFP