News
15.01.2024 - The FiFo evaluations of numerous German tax expenditures have put agro diesel and the motor vehicle tax exemption in agriculture on the BMF's definitive cut list according to "Wirtschaftswoche". Yet in the hearing of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag, Michael Thöne talks more about the reduction of subsidies in the air transport tax and outlines a competitively fair reduction of the general diesel privilege based on the Belgian model.
12.01.2024 - Municipal road construction contributions, a Prussian invention dating back to 1893, are extremely unpopular and have been abolished in almost all German Länder for a good five years. Also in North Rhine-Westphalia, they are now to be abolished once and for all. In his expert hearing statement, Michael Thöne outlines the evaluation criteria against which the non-contributory, low-bureaucracy and incentive-based financing of road construction must be measured. In this light, he characterises the mechanism now proposed as a good interim model.
09.01.2024 - Social Europe is at its strongest when it does not become a European welfare state ahead of time, argues Michael Thöne in the newly published final volume of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's "Germany Trilogy". After "Deutschland – Ländersache?!“ (2020) and "Deutschland und sein Geld“ (2022), the third book "Deutschland und sein Sozialstaat. Erfolgsgeschichte mit Zukunft?" (2024), which was initiated by the late FiFo Policy Fellow Jens Bullerjahn, offers a broad kaleidoscope of numerous contributions and discussions on social issues and social policy on 540 pages. All three books can be downloaded and ordered here.
12.12.2023 - The 2023 and 2024 federal budgets of Germany stand on the brink. This would not be necessary, as Michael Thöne shows in a digital presentation in Munich. Numerous subsidies and tax privileges have been evaluated over the last 20 years. Many of these have been assessed very critically - usually without any political consequences. The current budget crisis and the major transformations that Germany has to cope with provide a perfect opportunity to abolish outdated privileges on a wide front. This will free up a lot of funding for consolidation and mitigating selective hardships, for tax cuts and transformation financing. The side effect: a simpler and fairer tax system.
27.11.2023 - Especially in times of very tight public budgets, sustainability- and performance-oriented budgeting opens up new ways of implementing ambitious policies for the future with less money. With participation from the Bundestag, the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Audit Office and the three departments of the current 11th Spending Review, BMF, BMWK and BMUV, the FiFo-workshop at the Ministry for the Environment looked at the sound German preconditions for, as well as the important further steps towards sustainability-oriented budget modernization. Special thanks for the inputs from Deloitte and ZEW and in particular on Austrian green budgeting from the MoF in Vienna.