German Bundestag, January 28, 2021, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 25969-25970.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
As per the daily order, we are dealing with the draft for amending the introductory law of the tax code. It foresees an extension of the time period for delivery of tax declarations. Many tax consultants are presently over-burdened by attending to businesses shaken by Corona preventive measures. It is sensible to grant them more time for making out the tax declaration. We therefore actually want to vote for the draft law.
Our motion [Drucksache 19/26233] for revising the legal interest rate level in the tax law continues to be in the daily order. In the tax code is still to be found a fixed, annual interest rate level of 6 percent on additional tax payments. The Federal Fiscal Court has made clear in many decisions that this interest rate level, against the background of many years of a solidified zero interest rate policy, may indeed be unconstitutional and that the legislature is required to remedy it. That this so far has not been done is referenced to the topic being pending before the Federal Constitutional Court. We however think it well becomes us, the legislator, to take up the Federal Fiscal Court’s warning not to wait until our inactivity betrays us in Karlsruhe. This is the aim of our motion which I readily commend to you for approval.
It is seen that what is in the daily order is entirely unproblematic. Then we come to what is not there. Namely, you – by “you” is meant both of the present government delegations and the future government delegation of the Greens –
Manuela Rottmann (Greens): Now, don’t you give up, Herr Jacobi!
have just yesterday in the Finance Committee hung something on this draft law on taxation, in fact already once again an extended suspension on insolvency applications obligations and the rules challenging insolvency. This is not even correct at the formal levels. According to our order of business, the Finance Committee might decide only on what the Bundestag has therein assigned – and that was the tax law, not the insolvency law.
Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Since you however had not paid attention!
Exceptions are only permitted for questions which are in proximate connection with the assigned matters. This is, at the latest, no more the case when the subject is entered into by an entirely different committee. If you say that it is anyway all about Corona, then I believe you yourselves do not take that at all seriously. You have simply taken care of the orderly introduction, the first reading in plenary session, and spared the assignment to the standing committee. Ja, now.
And in fact here we do not go along. You want again, this time until April, to suspend parts of the insolvency law for businesses which have presented or could present applications for state assistance. This is remarkable. First, business is hit with the clumsiest usable club, the so-called lockdown. Then it is noted: “Oops, we, ja, directly ruin tens of thousands of livelihoods”, extol rapid state assistance, and want to paste over the dished out damages with a lot of money at the pump. Then it does not organizationally happen that the corresponding applications are generally able to be presented. And when this again is realized, the club is again taken up and simply smashes a bit of our legal order.
The insolvency application duty and the rules on challenging insolvency are not an end in themselves. The rules have a meaning. They defend the remaining economic commerce, as well as they can, from damages resulting from insolvent firms. With this law, for many creditors, especially for the treasury and the social funds, there is a motivation to make claims
Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Gott sei dank!
in which these creditors are privileged in case the crisis nevertheless later ends in insolvency. You thereby perhaps obtain for an indebted firm alleviations for a brief time. What you do however is you shift the insolvency risks onto the remaining, non-privileged creditors who cannot at all defend themselves against that. That is the big gesture of the rescuers, but is at the cost of third parties. That is an ordnungspolitisch failure and on that account we reject this part of your law.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
