Tax Cuts Not Wanted?

September 11, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Hurt Feelings Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Spending, State Spending, Taxation 2 Comments

In a country that registered a $250 billion surplus last year? That’s what some survey results are indicating here in Germany.

Doesn’t make any sense, right? Well maybe it does. Germany is also a country where “about half of Germans, including students, pensioners and unemployed are living on state aid.”

Nach dem Regierungsentwurf soll der Bund trotz zusätzlicher Ausgaben zur Betreuung von Flüchtlingen und weiterer Investitionen auch in den kommenden Jahren auf neue Schulden verzichten und einen ausgeglichenen Etat mit der “Schwarzen Null” bis 2020 halten.

German Of The Day: Fiasko

April 14, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Government Interference, Interventionism, Renewable energy, Taxation, Waste, Wind Energy Leave a comment

That means fiasco. You know, like the state-ordained Energiewende?

Berlin likes to think of itself as a green-energy example to the rest of the world. It sure is.

It makes you wonder if there’s any form of energy-price signal that governments won’t ignore. Germany’s 16-year-old Energiewende, or energy transformation, already has wrecked the country’s energy market in its quest to wean the economy off fossil fuels and nuclear power. Traditional power plants, including those that burn cleaner gas, have been closing left and right while soaring electricity prices push industries overseas and bankrupt households. Job losses run to the tens of thousands.

But now Berlin is going to fix all of this – again.

Derzeit gehe der Ausbau zu schnell und werde zu erheblichen Mehrkosten bei der Umlage zur Ökostrom-Förderung führen.

Speaking Of State Control…

April 6, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: German, Germans, Germany, GEZ, Language, Nanny State, Patermalism, Prison, State Control, Taxation, Television Leave a comment

There may not be any punishment here for producing awful television shows but if YOU get sassy and don’t pay your GEZ TV tax (or “mandatory fee,” as the tax collectors prefer to call it) you can go to jail.

I’m not making this up. All German households must shell out 17.50 euros ($20) a month to watch great entertainment like Traumshiff, Lindenstrasse and Tatort, Tatort, Tatort as well as be submitted to propagandistic-indoctrination-like nightly news programs à la the Tagesschau by those good old fashioned unelected and nameless state TV official folks over there at the ARD and the ZDF (exhale now). Or else.

A woman was freed from prison after a court in Chemnitz had admitted that they had kept her in custody for 61 days because of her refusal to pay the GEZ fees.

Regional state broadcaster MDR applied for an arrest warrant against Sieglinde Baumert in September 2015 in an attempt to force her to sign a statement about her assets, which she refused because, as she told “Die Welt” newspaper, “With my signature I would confirm the legality of the mandatory fees.”

“I feel patronized, I get the decision taken away from me about what I’m paying my money for.”

Coffee From Togo To Be Heavily Taxed

September 3, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Coffee, Deposits, Environmentalists, German, Germans, Germany, Government Intervention, Green Shirts, Greens, Language, Lobbies, Taxation 2 Comments

At last count, Germans who purchase coffee from Togo toss some 3 billion of the disposable cups used to temporarily carry it in each and every year.

Predictably outraged by this, German green shirts have predictably outraged German coffee vendors by suggesting that a 20-cent tax be placed on this luxury drink to encourage coffee Togo connoisseurs to bring along their reusable and occasionally re-washable coffee Togo coffee cups with them, preferably hanging on the environmentally friendly coffee Togo belt loop hangers attached to their biodegradable pants.

Should this prove to be too impractical for some customers, the ecological crusaders suggest, vendors should offer them a discount option (taxpayer subsidized) of drinking the invigorating beverage directly from their trembling cupped hands.

“Nehmen Sie sich ein wenig Zeit und trinken Ihren Kaffee vor Ort – aus einer Tasse.”

German Of The Day: Zwangsbeitrag

May 25, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: ARD, Experts, Fees, German, Germans, Germany, Government Control, Public-Sector TV, Scientists, Tatort, Taxation, TV, ZDF Leave a comment

That means “compulsory contribution” and refers here to the TV fees every German household has to pay for Öffentlich-Rechtliche or public-sector (or state) TV. You have to pay this here, you see, whether you watch these channels or not. You have to pay this here whether you even own a TV or not. Germany has the most expensive public-sector TV channels in the world, by the way.

Sounds reasonable, right? Hardy, har har. Well, now German “scientists” have suddenly figured out that Germany no longer needs these expensive public-sector channels and that they can be, pardon my French, “privatized.” German scientists are notoriously thorough, you know, and that’s why it takes them a little longer than other folks to figure this kind of stuff out.

Other Germans will not want to hear this, however. This is because, well… It’s hard to say why this is. It would mean getting rid of Tatort, for one thing. This would be earth-shattering or something. And in the end, Germans also want to have an official opinion maker, I suppose, someone they can always go to when they need an official opinion of their own, so-to-speak – and Der Spiegel isn’t handy at that moment.

The more things change the more they stay the same. So don’t even THINK about changing channels. “That’s right, folks. Don’t touch that dial!”

Wissenschaftler stellen bei der Betrachtung von ARD und ZDF fest: Deutschland braucht nicht länger den teuersten öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk der Welt.

German Of The Day: German Mut

May 18, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Cannabis, Christian Lindner, Economic Liberalism, FDP, Flat Tax, Free Choice, Free Democrats, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Liberalism, Marijuana, Political Parties, Taxation 1 Comment

Nope, that doesn’t mean German pooch or mongrel. That means German courage.

And it takes quite a bit of German courage for a German political party to come out in support of economic-liberal policies and free choice in a country like Germany these days (in the end, most Germans want everything regulated for them and prefer equality and conformity to free choice). But that is what the FDP (FDP 2.0?) is trying to do. They’re still on the outside looking in after their ousting in 2013 but appear to be bouncing back, at least for the moment.

They are currently so courageous, in fact, that they must be high. Not only are the Free Democrats now proposing that marijuana be legalized, which isn’t all that original these days, they also think it’s time for Germany to introduce a flat tax. Good luck on that. That’ll be a real hard one to sell here, as elsewhere. Who’s going to “eat the rich” then?

“Die erste Reform, die wir unserem Land empfehlen, ist eine Reform der Mentalität.”

Reproduction Regulators Recommend Rigorous Reform

February 1, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Child Benefits, Children, Demographics, Families, German, Germans, Germany, Kindergeld, Population, State Control, State Spending, Taxation, Traditions 5 Comments

The logic appears to go like this: Germans will only have children if they are paid by the state to do so.

That this money must first be taken from them by the state to only later be given back to them if they behave properly (improperly?) is the first oddity here but not really the issue at the moment – or at least not the one German politicians want to talk about. The problem now is that Germans aren’t having enough children (only 12% of families with children here have 3 or more). They are not following the German reproduction regulation logic like they are supposed to and are refusing to have large families despite regular increases to the child benefit or Kindergeld payments given here.

In an attempt to counteract what is now the German one-child-per-family-if-they-have-any-children-at-all tradition, some reproduction regulators are suggesting that families now be given higher payments for each successive child born. I’m sure this will work just great. Well, I’m kind of sure it might work maybe, I mean.

Of course more money will first have to be taken in from the Germans before some of it can be given back to some of them again but that’s never bothered legislators here before so why break with a tradition like that now?

“Die wirtschaftliche Situation von Familien verbessert sich trotz der staatlichen Unterstützung im Durchschnitt nicht.”

Eat More Rich People!

April 28, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Money, Satire, Taxation, Taxes, Wealth 2 Comments

Germans should be ashamed of themselves. Again, I mean. The amount of personal wealth just keeps on rising here – another 79 billion this past quarter – and has reached yet another historic level. The Germans, it seems, have never been richer. And this, as we all know, is a bad thing.

Haven’t you people ever heard of Umverteilung (redistribution) over here? What do you need all that damned money for? It’s not like it’s yours or anything. Well it is but it isn’t, if you know what I’m sayin’. And who says it doesn’t stink? It stinks that you still have it. What you folks need is leadership like we have now been graced with in New York City itself. You’ve already got all the tax loopholes you’ll be needing so roll up your sleeves and let’s get this party started!

Im vierten Quartal 2013 wuchs das Vermögen der privaten Haushalte in Form von Bargeld, Wertpapieren, Bankeinlagen oder Ansprüchen gegenüber Versicherungen im Vergleich zum Vorquartal um rund 79 Milliarden Euro oder 1,6 Prozent auf den historischen Höchstwert von 5,15 Billionen Euro, teilte die Deutsche Bundesbank mit.

Crime Does Not Pay TV

March 13, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Crime, Fußball, German, Germans, Germany, Hitler, JVA Landsberg, Mein Kampf, Prison, Soccer, Sports, Swiss Accounts, Tax evasion, Taxation, Taxes, Uli Hoeneß 2 Comments

Uli Hoeness hasn’t yet begun his three-and-a-half year jail sentence for seven cases of tax evasion (his lawyers are appealing the decision) but when he does, it’s going to be absolute hell.

The JVA Landsberg prison he will most likely be doing time in does not allow cell phones and prisoners have to buy their own TVs! But even more cruel and unusual here is that they don’t allow prisoners to have satellite pay TV receivers. Watching Fußball on Sky just ain’t going to be happening, Uli.

By the way, this is where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and he didn’t have a satellite receiver, either. I think I’m going to be keeping my eyes on this one.

Das bedeutet unter anderem, dass den Häftlingen kein Fernseher gestellt wird. „Sie müssen sich selber einen Fernseher kaufen und können damit dann die üblichen Kabel-Programme empfangen“, sagt Eichinger. Auch die Kabel-Gebühren müssen von den Häftlingen getragen werden. Da für den Bezahlsender Sky aber ein Receiver benötigt werde, könne dieser nicht empfangen werden.

L’Etat, C’est You

December 29, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt, German, Germans, Germany, Government spending, Government Waste, National Debt, Politics, Public Sector Debt, Spending, Taxation Leave a comment

Or at least the national deficit is all yours, my German friends (and mine – I live and pay taxes here, too).

But there’s good news, at least. Sort of. It’s only going to get worse!

It’s a paradoxical situation: The economy is braving the euro crisis, tax revenue is making the coffers ring and the German state still goes further into debt. The public sector deficit climbed to 30 billion euros during the first nine months this year. First and foremost the federal government, but also social security and other benefits have gone into the red.

And economists fear that this is just the beginning. Billions of new burdens have been tucked away in the coalition agreement just signed between the Union and the SPD. Tax, social insurance and other contribution increases are right around the corner.

Hey, you voted this coalition government into office, Germany. Oh, that’s right. You didn’t.

Trotz guter Konjunktur und steigender Steuereinnahmen macht Deutschland Milliarden neue Schulden. Jetzt befürchten Ökonomen: Das wird die Bürger teuer zu stehen kommen – und zwar schon bald.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Taxation