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The red-green Hamburg Senate passed the bill for a new Hamburg property tax on Tuesday.
The city is thus deviating from the submission of the Federal Minister of Finance and former Mayor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and is relying on its own model.
"The federal model does not fit into a growing metropolis like Hamburg," said Finance Senator Andreas Dressel (SPD).
"Our planned residential model is best suited to the specific conditions of a large city with a dynamic and tense housing market."
In April 2018, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the previously applicable property tax unconstitutional and thus made a new legal regulation necessary.
The federal government had passed a new law, but allowed the states to set their own rules through an opening clause.
In contrast to the Scholz area model, the type of use and residential area would also be included in the calculation of the future Hamburg property tax.
Nevertheless, it is easy to administer, said Dressel.
The aim is to avoid upheavals in the Hamburg housing market, counteract the segregation of the city and avoid significant additional burdens for taxpayers.
New property tax C
The law, which the citizens still have to agree to, is tailored to Hamburg's great need for affordable housing, said Senator for Urban Development Dorothee Stapelfeldt (SPD).
"The new real estate tax clearly favors living and differentiates the assessment basis according to area sizes and residential areas, not according to pure land values."
"This property speculation is supposed to be made less attractive by the property tax C, so that it no longer stands in the way of urgently needed housing," she said.
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The tax should apply from 2025.
In the coming year, property owners are to submit a new declaration of assessment in which, in addition to name and tax ID, only the so-called location, i.e. the use, the floor area and the living and usable area of the building must be specified.
The data should be entered online, although there is a cooperation with Bavaria, said Dressel.
“They do the IT for us.” Based on all the data, the Hamburg-wide assessment rate is determined and determined in 2024, which then decides on the actual amount of the tax, on which there are in turn discounts - particularly high for social housing and monuments, for example.
Overall, however, the property tax should remain income-neutral in both the commercial and residential sectors, stressed Dressel.
On the revenue side, the tax estimate will, as before, be around 500 million euros per year.
"We don't want to take more, but not less either."
CDU praises, FDP is skeptical
The Hamburg opposition voiced criticism and praise for the proposal.
“It would be sensible and fair to adopt the Bavarian model, which is based on the area.
Instead, Hamburg introduces a value component with the categorization of normal and good locations, which turns the property tax into a disguised SPD wealth tax, ”said the FDP MP Anna von Treuenfels-Frowein.
The inclusion of the location of the property will create new injustices, because even in particularly good residential areas there are properties of inferior quality, for example on busy streets.
For the CDU, the parliamentary group's spokesman for budget policy, Tilo Kleibauer, said: “It is good that the Senate has also recognized that Olaf Scholz's property tax model based on current real estate values is not a solution for Hamburg.
We support a simple and transparent property tax model based on land and building space. ”However, the CDU continues to view a special property tax C for undeveloped land with great skepticism:“ This is an alibi solution that has already failed. ”
"Smart, simple, convincing"
The real estate industry sees the Senate on the right track, but there is also criticism.
"Smart, simple, convincing and transparent" is the proposal, according to Andreas Breitner, Director of the Association of North German Housing Companies.
The Hamburg model now presented will "after our first assessment ensure that the new property tax does not act as a price driver for housing costs in Hamburg."
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The North Regional Association of the Federal Association of Independent Real Estate and Housing Companies (BFW), the Hamburg Landowners Association and IVD Nord responded to the draft with a joint statement.
In it, she criticized, among other things, the planned privileges for certain housing companies.
In principle, however, the associations welcome the fact that Hamburg does not follow the federal model in structuring the property tax.
“The Hamburg area-location model is comprehensible and largely does justice to the market.
Of course there will be shifts here and there.
But overall, according to today's judgment, it will not lead to an increase in housing costs ”, so the assessment of the associations.
However, the BFW Landesverband Nord, the Landowners Association Hamburg and the IVD Nord have no understanding of the planned privileges for subsidized, communal and cooperative apartments. "It is incomprehensible that cooperatives and municipal housing companies in particular receive a further discount of 25 percent," it said.