BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Taxpayers should be able to fully deduct their pension contributions from next year. This emerges from the draft for the annual tax law, which is available to the German Press Agency. According to calculations by the Ministry of Finance, the affected citizens will be relieved by around 3.2 billion euros in 2023. In 2024, it is therefore still about 1.76 billion euros.
The expenses for the old-age provision can be fully taken into account as a special expense. That happens two years earlier than originally planned. “We deliberately prefer this step – because relief is particularly important in times of high inflation,” said Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) of the dpa. At the same time, the new regulation creates more clarity in the tax system. “This serves to avoid double taxation,” says Lindner.
In the future, pensions will only be taxed in the payment phase in old age. The expenses for the old-age provision can be claimed for tax purposes beforehand. The conversion includes pensions from the statutory pension insurance, the agricultural old-age fund, the professional pension institutions and from basic pension contracts, so-called Rrup pensions.
The president of the social association VdK, Verena Bentele, does not think the plans have been thought through to the end. Double taxation is not completely ruled out, she criticized. The background is that pensions in old age will be fully taxed from 2040. Taxpayers who have had to pay tax on their contributions in recent years and who are pensioners in 2040 would be asked to pay twice. Bentele therefore called for the full taxation of pensions to be postponed from 2040 to 2070./tam/DP/ngu