Kay Gottschalk
Abolition of Property Tax
German Bundestag, June 27, 2019,
Plenarprotokoll 19/107, pp. 13107-13108
[Kay Gottschalk
is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German
state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. A former member of the SPD, he is an insurance manager
and an Odd Fellow. He here responds to proposals for property tax reform
presented by the government and the Linke party.]
Right honorable Herr President. Dear ladies
and gentlemen. Dear colleagues.
All motions and speeches – for which I first
of all wish to express thanks – have indicated one thing: the property tax must
go. It is unreformable and socially unjust.
I want to clarify the highlights of some of
the wonderful motions, primarily those of the Linke. One motion consists of
half a page – for all that, it is exactly so empty of content – and shows the
hundred year mental pause of the Linke; I gladly wish to include the Greens and
the SPD in that. The Linke – I quote – want “to eliminate the property tax
assessment” of rent “in the operating cost regulation”.
Britta Haßelmann (Bündnis90/Grünen): How can
one say, “The property tax must be immediately done away with”? Say that to the
local governments [Kommunen]. A loss
of 15 billion euros! That’s what the AfD wants!
You plainly said it already. In Germany it comes to 19 percent per
square meter. Ladies and gentlemen, do you earnestly believe that this
elimination or your ineffective rental price control does anything whatever?
No! The landlords will include it in the cost of the cold rent. You plainly
have no idea of the market economy; that is also a core problem of the SPD. You
perhaps think that in your red Cloud Cuckoo Land; but you have bad luck when it
comes to thinking. Once more: the landlords will shift it.
Stefan Schmidt (Bündnis90/Grünen): For
once present what you do for rental price control!
Yet at least the motion suits your red and dead mentality. All who
have property and produce, namely the providers [Leistungsträger] – for you, that is a foreign word – are, for you,
cash cows. He who first orders construction of housing, who is he then? That is
the investors and the owners. Your housing and rental space does not fall from
heaven. It appears that you think so; it is not so. On that account, to be able
to administer social justice, we must abolish the property tax. Since what is
more social?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you really want to relieve the citizens
out there, attend to the AfD motion and abolish the property tax. Anyone here
in Berlin who has a 50 square meter dwelling on the average pays some 25 euros
per month alone for the property tax over the incidental costs. When we rid
them of that then they fight with 25 euros more per month. That brings more
than any law on tax alteration that we here pass. The family relief law does
not bring 10 euros. Ladies and gentlemen, we bring them 25 euros per month. We
are the only rent reduction party and therefore the only social party remaining
here in Germany.
Matthias W. Birkland (Linke): What then
is your financing proposal? How do you want to finance it? For once say it. How
do you want to equalize the tax loss?
We come to the so-called draft law of the GroKo [present coalition government of CDU/CSU and SPD]. They want
to again introduce property tax C. Ladies and gentlemen, that is likewise
something of a relic which already has failed once. It corresponds to an almost
leftist power of thought.
Matthias W.
Birkland (Linke): Which can still learn!
Ladies and gentlemen of the CDU, are you not properly ashamed of
yourselves to wish so soon to yet again introduce such a reptile? At the end of
the day you again yield to Bavarian interests, wishing an opening clause. You
thereby make all the ladies and gentlemen there outside even more insecure. You
will again fail before the constitutional court and then your Kommunen – I do not wish to be a Bürgermeister there – must replace all
of the tax obligations. That is your solid, hand-made policy. You are incapable
of reform. As my colleague Albert Glaser has already said: This law is botched!
Therefore, please support our motion.
Matthias W.
Birkland (Linke): Under no circumstance!
What you present here is a real patchwork rug. What you present
here is a legal mess. It will not succeed. On these grounds, ladies and
gentlemen, my delegation will not agree to this thoroughly unreasoned,
unsocial, administratively bloated law for property tax reform. Better to
support us before you land anew in front of the constitutional court, and that
I forecast.
Thank you.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
