BERLIN Finance Minister Hans Eichel said in an interview on Saturday that there was no need to widen the tax cut package passed last month despite opposition complaints that the plan did not do enough to help the middle class.
"I don't see any leeway or necessity to change the largest tax reform ever passed in Germany," Eichel told Reuters in an interview.
"The tax reform now available will bring the lowest tax rate to 19.9 percent in the coming year to 17 percent in 2003 and 15 percent in 2005," he added.
"That brings respectable relief for families and workers." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder won a surprise victory in July by getting Parliament to pass a sweeping tax cut package despite his coalition's lack of a majority in the Upper House.
"The tax cutting package lowers top rates to 42 percent by 2005," Eichel said. "The overall volume of the 2000 tax relief is 62.5 billion mark ($29 billion)." The opposition Christian Democrats have complained that the tax measure does not do enough, a view party head Angela Merkel reflected in an interviewed broadcast Sunday.
"In the autumn we will revive the debate on tax reform," Merkel told ZDF television.
"We want to know why small business is going to be hit so hard by this tax reform." Germany's Trade Industry Association (BDI) has also criticized the tax reform measure, saying the government had failed to live up to its promise to improve the bill for small businesses.
Eichel said the tax cut package already included an additional seven billion marks more than the original plan which the opposition had sought to help boost the economy.
"I do not see any other possibility for changes," he told Reuters.
Germans pay an additional tax of 5.5 percent of taxable income in the solidarity tax.
(Reuter)