Germany's finance minister wants to scrap spousal tax splitting
Key takeaways
- Highly controversial, but not well understood: German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil wants to change the tax benefits for married couples.
- One speaker made an extremely dramatic plea against what he called the "culture of death" that has allegedly taken hold in Germany.
- Is tax law really relevant to deep philosophical debates on the sanctity of life?
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Highly controversial, but not well understood: German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil wants to change the tax benefits for married couples.
https://p.dw.com/p/5Cf30Married couples in Germany can get significant tax benefits if one spouse earns more than the other Image: Micha Korb/pressefoto_korb/picture alliance Advertisement Last weekend, several thousand people took to the streets in Munich to demonstrate against abortion and assisted suicide. One speaker made an extremely dramatic plea against what he called the "culture of death" that has allegedly taken hold in Germany. One sign of this, the speaker argued, was that the government is planning to abolish a regulation known as "spousal tax splitting."
Is tax law really relevant to deep philosophical debates on the sanctity of life? Is it even a matter of life and death at all? Surely we needn't go that far? In any case, the intense political uproar surrounding the new debate on whether to abolish spousal tax splitting is notable, even by today's standards of populist outrage.