Strategy for the federal election
SPD plans tax reform and purchase bonus for electric cars
October 13, 2024, 3:42 a.m
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A year before the federal election, the SPD is lining up for the election campaign. The Social Democrats want to score points primarily with economic policy issues.
In the federal election campaign, the SPD wants to campaign for a fundamental income tax reform that will relieve the burden on 95 percent of taxpayers. To achieve this, the highest one percent of income should be taxed more heavily. This emerges from a draft resolution for the SPD board meeting, which is to be passed in the evening. “This reform will give people more financial flexibility and strengthen purchasing power. In this way, we will stimulate the economy from below and from the middle of society,” it says.
At the two-day closed meeting, which begins today at the party headquarters in Berlin, the SPD executive board will set the first substantive and strategic course for the federal election, which, as things currently stand, will take place on September 28, 2025. The six-page resolution is titled “We are fighting for Germany’s future: stimulating the economy, securing jobs, relieving the burden on employees.” In the paper, the SPD also advocates for a minimum wage of 15 euros, several measures to promote sales of electric cars and a reform of debt rules.
Tax bonuses for investors
In order to promote investments in Germany, the party is planning a kind of “Made in Germany” bonus. A blanket reduction in corporate taxes is rejected as “not sufficiently targeted.” Instead, the Social Democrats want to “link comprehensive super depreciation and tax bonuses for companies to investments in future industries and good jobs in Germany,” as the draft resolution says. “Anyone who invests in Germany receives tax advantages.”
In order to promote the sale of electric cars, a purchase bonus should be examined, among other things. The SPD also wants to introduce an electric car quota for leasing providers and provide tax incentives for electric company cars.
The SPD sharply criticizes the economic policy of the CDU under its chairman and candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz in the paper. “Anyone who insults employees in Germany as lazy and denies them good wages and secure pensions has lost respect for the true top performers who keep our country running every day with their hard work,” the paper says. “This also includes the many millions of employees with a migration background and their families who have to experience every day being described as a “problem” by the CDU and CSU.”
In the last federal election, the SPD received almost 26 percent of the vote. In current surveys it is at 16 to 17 percent, far behind the Union and neck and neck with the AfD.