Albrecht Glaser, June 25, 2021, Common Use Political Organizations

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/237, pp. 30900-30901.

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Football Germany experienced a moment of horror at the game of the national team against France when a para-glider in the course of its demonstration flight nearly unleashed a catastrophe. This proceeding, according to the current legal situation, is an emission of a Greenpeace common use activity.

Plainly the question of what actually common use can be in the sense of tax law has to be decided by the tax administration in the case of Attac. This political network arose in Germany with a “declaration for democratic control of the financial market”. This resolution was undersigned by various leftist-directed organizations and by politicians of Bundnis 90/Die Grünen and the SPD.

According to statements of the Hessen Fiscal Court, Attac is active as follows: The association “promoted demands of concrete tax policy for an improvement of the income of the entire State, exercised criticism of the Federal government’s legal proposal, applied itself with an on-line appeal to the Federal Chancellor and Federal Ministers…, arranged collections of signatures and demanded of ‘die Politik’ to no longer fiscally favor holding companies like investment funds”, and demanded state political projects “which subject the public to democratic control” [„der demokratischen Kontrolle der Öffentlicjkeit zu unterwerfen”]. – End quote.

            Michael Schrodi (SPD): Very good demands!

Appropriately, the BFH [Federal Fiscal Court] in 2019 then needed to come to the conclusion that in regards campaigns substantially managed by Attac, it was not about the provision of educational content, but about a – quote – “publicly effective presentation and carrying through of its own conceptions on daily political themes and thereby about influencing the political decision-making process and public opinion”.

In its second decision in the scope of the revision on December 10, 2020, the BFH was then still more clear: “The influencing of political decision-making and the formation of public opinion is not an independent common use purpose in the sense of §52 of the tax code”. And: The complainant “cannot place in question by means of its understanding of the term political education” the BFH’s decision. – End quote.

§52 of the tax code presently permits the merger of tax-favored corporate bodies into a kind of tax-favored corporate body concern in which, according to §58 of the tax code, tax-favored  corporate bodies are allowed to send on their own tax-favored income to other tax-favored corporate bodies. Thereby is in question whether this is reconcilable with the principle of immediacy in pursuit of a tax-favored purpose by means of a corporate body which receives from members and donors concrete gifts which go to a concrete purpose. For the immediate pursuit of a purpose is a prerequisite for achieving the status of the common use organization.

In view of a legal situation clarified by a Federal superior court, it could be expected that now nationwide the Finance officials examine their cases of common use – and particularly by means of an inspection of the facts – as to whether there are to be found comparable organizations which are illegally obtaining tax favors; especially if these privileges have been authorized: No corporate tax, no basic tax, no real property tax, a moderated turnover tax.

In addition, acknowledged common use organizations are authorized to issue donation vouchers to natural persons and to businesses. Both groups can each year direct up to 20 percent of their revenue or profits to such organizations and write off such contributions from their basic tax assessment.

Abuse blooms as a result of so many subventions. Thus then can motorized para-gliders be commissioned, demonstrations organized with large devices for generating noise and travel cost compensation for participants, a printing of leaflets and a financing of advertisements which will be paid for Bundestag members, etc., etc. A known transfer from members to such business models is not to be overlooked. With such tax subventions will be erected an entire scene of so-called civil society organizations which shall then lend democratic legitimacy to bad politics.

All of this is indeed the reason why the Federal Finance Minister and the State Finance Ministers have agreed on a kind of non-application decree until the end of 2021. That is a scandal and a nullification of the verdict, ladies and gentlemen.Your intent was indeed in this legislative period to legalize the abuses of Greenpeace, Attac & Co. That fortunately, up to today, has not succeeded.

We therefore demand [Drucksache 19/30970] securing as quickly as possible the existing legal situation and, additionally, thinning out the catalogue of promoted purposes in §52 of the tax code. It contains rubber clauses, as for example in numeral 25 – quote – “the promotion of citizens’ engagement in favor of common use, benevolent and church purposes”.

Here is urgently required a legislative clarification.

Surreptitious or abusive common use, ladies and gentlemen, is tax embezzlement, and certainly when it is committed by leftist fighting organizations.

Hearty thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, June 24, 2021, Merkel Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/236, pp. 30538-30539.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable Frau Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

This government declaration also has passed by like all the others: Without a spark of insight into the mistaken decisions which line your path as Chancellor, mistaken decisions which have deeply divided this country and have inflicted heavy damages on it for years and decades beyond.

You want to pursue this path to the bitter end; that we may infer from your statements for the impending EU summit. In all seriousness, you urge the renewal of the EU’s migration agreement with Turkey. That is nothing other than the new edition of a historic failure.The EU thereby renews its liability to extortion. You pay, and for that offer the German taxpayer as a cash box. You make yourself dependent on the whims of the Turkish president who can at will continue to turn on and off the migration sluices [Schleusen].

The key to checking illegal migration lies not in Ankara; it lies in Berlin. Here, with the highest social aid allocations, people will be enticed to the dangerous passage. Here, traffickers [Schleuser] will trade as rescuers-at-sea, even sponsored by the churches. And here, the signals will be sent that as good as no one who does it for us need ever again go. Turn off these signals and defend the German borders against illegal migrants!

Certainly, Frau von der Leyen travels with checkbook through the European capitals and distributes billions from the so-called Corona reconstruction fund. And in Berlin she dropped off a check for 24 billion – money which will be squandered for dirigiste climate protection measures with questionable uses. The ostensible reconstruction fund is the camouflage for the introduction of the European debts union. The EU Commission itself can now take up loans and distribute the money at discretion. The national states stand for the re-payment, before all Germany and its taxpayers. From you and this parliament will be uninterruptedly wrested the control over our own state finances, the budget right.

And for this assault on the basic principles of the democratic order, for this assault on the parliamentary budget right and the state of law, you bear responsibility. That is an additionally melancholy milestone in the long series of mistaken decisions of your 16 years as Chancellor.You inconsiderately abuse the Corona crisis so as to disguise this transfer of sovereignty to the EU, to expand state influence in economy and society and to force the transition to a managed, climate-protection, planned economy – at the cost of the energy industry, at the cost of the investment goods industry, at the cost of the automobile branch, and thus there where most of the workplaces are.

Your Corona policy is your grossest failure of late, and on that account you cling so bitterly to it and unfortunately deny every advance in knowledge. Our European neighbors for long seek the way back to normality, and the German Corona policy hardens further, clamped to the incidence value, and stirs up panic for the autumn with the conjuration of distant, threatening scenarios of the so-called Delta variant.

Thereby one thing needs be retained: Your regime of lockdown and state of emergency has for health and security brought no measurable advantages vis-à-vis alternative options of treatment. Yet it has inflicted gigantic collateral damages on the economy and the society, seriously damaged the Mittelstand and the middle class, ruined livelihoods, left children and seniors to suffer, and for an entire generation of students destroyed their educational opportunities.

With panic-making and apodictic black-white thinking, your policy has deeply divided this country, the gap between poor and rich enlarges, and the citizens’ basic rights and rights of freedom in never hitherto known dimensions have been placed at disposal. The reasons for this policy are falling like dominoes. General restrictions of basic rights and long-term lockdowns are not only unconstitutional, they also yield nothing. And the list of examples of countries which without such drastic intervention have come better through the crisis steadily becomes longer: From Sweden, Switzerland, to a series of states in the U.S.A.

Distance instruction at schools closed for months is ineffective. It throws back students like an endless summer vacation.

The general argument conjured up by you of a bed emergency in the clinics also evidently was not present.

            Claudia Roth (Greens): What?

The healthcare system was at no point in time threatened.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): That is so!

Stimulated by falsely incentivized subventions, the reported numbers of beds were by many times manipulated. That is in the report of the Federal Audit Authority; read it.

PCR rests are not appropriate as a means for the mass detection of occurences of infection. One of two tested positive was in fact not infected.That also is the fact. Settlement fraud in regards rapid tests and dubious mask deals show primarily one thing: Where state dirigism runs free, false economy, waste and corruption are never far.

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You yourself well know that with your party donations affair! You are there in first place! Party donations swamp!

And the billions which were squandered here would have been by far better invested in a reform of clinic financing. That also needs be said.

This false way may not be allowed to be repeated in the autumn when the virus activity will again be seasonally strengthened. Germany must turn back to a policy of reason and a good eye [Augenmass], of citizens’ self-responsibility instead of state interference. And before all we need one thing: We need a new government.

I am heartily grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, June 11, 2021, Research in Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/234, pp. 30277-30278.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube.

Distinction and distress [Glanz und Elend] are nowhere so near one another as in the German research policy; for despite all the warning cries, one thing is ever still the case: We have in this country the world’s smartest thinkers. The scientific performances of our researchers are brilliant and move at the top level.

When these abilities and our research success are considered, it could be thought we are headed towards a brilliant future. Yet that unfortunately in not the case. For our hard-earned research achievements are frequently commercialized in other places, in foreign countries. It appears as if we ever still had a strong push for knowledge and a formative culture of preciseness, yet nevertheless lack the entrepreneurial spirit. In the Education and Research Committee in this electoral period, we have often spoken of the transfer of research results to future-oriented and marketable products; yet we have not thus progressed. That principally lies in a central false conception which is also inherent in all of the FDP’s motions submitted here today. And I thereby indeed do mean the heresies of a kind of scientific planned economy which all parties here, other than the AfD, are cultivating.

Let us look at which barrel-busters the old parties have thus proposed and pushed: There is the Agency for Launch Innovations [Sprunginnovationen], highly valued by the Federal government. This agency shall decide which research projects shall be promoted and pushed to marketable products. There thus sits a body of ten people who blithely toss out the window the money of our taxpayers, and indeed 100 million euros each year. You inquire of the consequences? Hitherto, nothing. This agency can thus on good authority be designated as a true money burning machine.

And otherwise? The FDP unconditionally wants its German transfer community. What now is that again? The magenta socialists want to create a super-bureaucratic authority which publishes and supervises a kind of 5-year-plan for the production of innovations.

            Anna Christmann (Greens): You have no idea!

And that is also the reason why I always call you magenta socialists, dear colleagues: You – and in this legislative period, you have sufficiently shown it – are socialists painted pink. More still: Instead of promoting and without compromise carrying through scientific excellence, you are still lapsing into the delusion of placing above all else gender justice and higher quotas of diversity. If you wanted more spin-offs, these quotas do not help. They only hinder.

Yet it is the same whether we here speak of spin-offs, of the quality of scientific teaching, of declining standards in the area of education in the schools, or of the unfortunately inconsequential long-term project for MINT [Math-Informatik-Naturwissenschaften-Technik] education. You all talk, talk, talk, yet you achieve nothing. Whereby: That is now not quite fair; since you in the meantime have managed to bury freedom of research in Germany and, quite along with that, you have also flattened future-oriented research in nuclear energy.

You fight with an absolute bitterness for quotas instead of quality and it no longer strikes you how you thereby are ever more accelerating the downfall of this country. You ignore what brings success in favor of climate catastrophes and cheap speeches for ostensibly disadvantaged, daily changing groups of victims.

Yet there is also another way. You want spin-offs and entrepreneurial spirit? Then cease getting on the people’s nerves with your unrealistic motions and initiatives! Stop the quotas madness and again make room for authentic scientific brilliance! Then your longed-for top researchers will no more emigrate to foreign countries.

            Petra Sitte (Linke): It is an impudence to insinuate that women cannot perform!

I have not asserted that. In Berlin, there was a mathematics professor who was not accepted because he was a man; who now is a top researcher in a foreign country.

            Petra Sitte (Linke): Yes, yes!

That is the effect of your quotas and that we plainly do not want.

Dismantle the bureaucratic hurdles and cease leading on and pestering the research institutions; for you do not know better than our scientists and researchers. Thus, all of you simply get out of the way of those who are able and want to achieve something. All would thereby be aided.

At this place, I want to thank you as always for your attention. – I nevertheless also want to let loose one very important matter: Georg Thiel is for 106 days in custody on account of an unpaid broadcast contribution. That is absolutely disproportionate. Therefore, let free Georg Thiel, Herr Buhrow!

Thanks.

            Oliver Kaczmarek (SPD): Sad, sad!

 

[trans: tem]