German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/30, pp. 2686-2687.
Right
honorable Frau President. Dear spectators.
The CDU/CSU
with a motion wants to make transparent the digitalization costs of tax law
proposals.
Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Correct!
We share this
goal.
Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Very good!
We find
however that the Union cannot credibly represent these concerns.
Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Why?
The motion is
a historical digression on the partially failed introduction of tax software in
the financial administration, beginning in the year 1991, thus prior to KONSENS;
called namely FISCUS. Since then, the Union has governed 24 years. At the latest
after the Machtübernahme [taking
power] in the year 2005
Antje Tillmann (CDU/CSU): “Machtübernahme” is not at all the right term!
Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Verantwortungsübernahme [taking responsibility]!
– after
taking charge of the government in the year 2005, you the Union would have been
able, and needed to, implement this goal of the motion. This motion, a few
months after the change of the government, actually shows your failure as a
government.
Ladies and
gentlemen of the Union, you have with your greatest Chancellor of all time in
the years 2010, 2012 and 2017 declared digitalization to be a top priority. Yet
in the entire 16 years, you forgot to cast into law this relatively simple
digitalization motion. On that account, we can all of us still well recall that
many Union members had sufficient time for, as an example, lucrative mask
deals.
Thus why
should the governing delegations actually do you the favor of now implementing
your motion? Do you understand the new government as a repair operation for neglected
duties?
The motion
quite well describes the origin of the failures and eternal delays in the IT
implementation.There are – I cite: “Constantly new legal and political requirements”.
In fact, the legislation ever again ever more rapidly changes. Meanwhile, there
are monthly – earlier, it was yearly – articles in the newspapers; here is one
from 2022:
[The speaker holds up a paper]
Pension
Taxation Changes. – And here, it changes in October. – This is for the normal citizen
just simply bewildering.
We here in
parliament, and especially the present governing delegations, attend to these
failures with ever new laws – it can be safely said, with a regulation mania. The
constant changes in the tax law are simply harmful. The Union’s motion is in
this connection also simply just muddling along with eyes on the road. What we
need would be a long-term concept for the digitalization of our administration
and tax collection – simple, slim, free of bureaucracy and secure for the
future. In regards the citizens, trust, mutuality, transparency and durability
are more imperative than ever.
The question
thus is: How is it made better? The AfD in this regard has laid on the table
the right proposal on the basis of the Kirchhof model. With this model, you,
dear Union, campaigned in the year 2005; unfortunately, you afterwards quite
opportunistically chased Professor Kirchhof off the Hof – once again, a broken election promise; for you, it is, ja, a routine.
With the AfD
model, the complexity and thereby the lack of transparency would have been
eliminated in the tax law. It is ever still more ridiculous to assert that 80
percent of the tax literature comes from Germany. It is in reality only 15
percent. Yet that too is an expression of over-bureaucratization; since we have
only 2 percent of all taxpayers worldwide.
The goal must
be that the average taxpayer once again understands his tax statement. This
must be united with a distinct relief of the middle class. If you want to make
the tax collection modern and contemporary, then implement our motion, Drucksache 19/25305, which enlists for a
tax collection pilot project with Distributed Ledger technologies.
Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Oh!
You will ask,
What is Distributed Ledger?
Jens Zimmermann (SPD): No, we know.
Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): We
know.
Anke Domscheit-Berg (Linke): That is [****]. Almost always!
It is what
your commissioner calls “blockchange” when he means blockchain.
Right
honorable parliamentary colleagues, take the motion as an occasion to reduce
taxes and radically simplify the tax law on the basis of the AfD proposal. Then
the motion also has its good. We will abstain.
Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): Since it’s not so bad when you abstain!
Many thanks
for your attention.
[trans: tem]
