Broadcasting fee: That much is not paid

In 2020, contributors in Germany owed over 900 million euros in broadcasting contributions including late payment penalties to the “ARD, ZDF and Deutschland-Radio-Beitragsservice”. This is reported by the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

To be precise, there are 903 million euros in broadcasting fees and late payment penalties that were not paid in 2020. This emerges from written information from the nine state broadcasters that the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag queried and which is available in the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (NOZ). These 903 million euros correspond to around 11.3 percent of the total income (8.1 billion euros in 2020).

The extensive refusal to pay continued in 2021: from January to September 2021, the contributions that were not paid on time, including late payment penalties, totaled 596 million euros. Almost 40 million households in Germany have to pay broadcasting fees.

Reasons for Not Paying

The contribution service, a joint facility of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung: “We assume that in the vast majority of cases, financial reasons are the cause of a payment arrears”. The contribution service points out that the proportion of defaulting fee payers at seven percent “corresponds almost exactly to the number of over-indebted households in Germany”. 93 percent of the contribution accounts are therefore balanced.

And further: “Many fail to transfer money on time for organizational reasons.” Other reasons given by the contribution service are problems of understanding or a lack of language skills. How many contributors deliberately refuse to pay out of protest is apparently unknown.

The contribution service tries to downplay the relatively high number of outstanding amounts. This number has “relatively little significance”. Because interim transactions or payments are not taken into account.

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