Germany has a problem. The federal government would actually like to transfer money to its citizens during the energy crisis. But this is not that easy. According to Finance Minister Lindner, it could take 18 months to bring together the account and tax data of all Germans.
Winter is just around the corner, it's getting colder by the day. But this year, heating is more expensive than ever. Many can no longer afford gas or district heating. The energy crisis has long since made itself felt in their accounts. The federal government therefore wants to relieve people. In theory, the easiest way to do this is with direct government payments to those who need the money most urgently - economists advocate this again and again.
But that's not possible at the moment, as Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner recently explained. "It sounds so easy," said the FDP leader. "You would say, maybe I too, a year ago: Yes, let's do it." The matter is more complicated: because the problem is to connect the tax data and the IBAN numbers of all citizens. According to Lindner, the federal government is currently working on the legal implementation.
All in all, according to Lindner, it would take 18 months for the German authorities to merge the two sets of data. And even if that's done, according to the Treasury Secretary, the administration could only process 100,000 transfers a day. For a technology country, these are sobering numbers.
That's why Gisela Färber is also skeptical. "It may be that the servers are not more powerful, but that only indicates the state of digitization at the federal level," says the professor at the German University for Administrative Sciences in Speyer in the ntv podcast "Learned again". Thousands of transfers are already being made every day: the family benefit offices, for example, send money to the legal guardians of millions of children, the computers in the job centers pay out unemployment benefits I and II. Maximum 100,000 transfers per day? "That can actually only be due to the performance capacities of a federal financial administration," says Färber.
The administration expert also cannot imagine that it should take a year and a half for the Federal Central Tax Office to compile and link the account and tax data of the German population. Nevertheless, she can understand that it is anything but simple for the traffic light to transfer money directly to the accounts. Not all Germans make a tax return, so not all account details are available. In addition, "the majority of our tax administration is at the state level and electronic files are kept there for income tax and sales tax," says the expert. "It's now largely digitized and has little bureaucracy. But otherwise we don't have a uniform register."
The problem was foreseeable. The traffic light agreed on climate money in its coalition agreement from December 2021. To compensate for the rising CO2 price, all citizens should regularly receive a state payment directly into their account. In this way, the federal government wants to relieve the population, for example, of rising petrol and diesel prices. And at the same time create incentives to make everyday life more climate-friendly. It would have been possible to pay out the relief in the same way.
Because the direct route is still blocked by countless construction sites, the state has to use various detours. In September, an energy price lump sum of around 300 euros was paid out by the employer. Payments to pensioners will soon follow. When it comes to payments to older people, another problem with the traffic light plans becomes apparent: it is not possible to distinguish precisely between the various population groups. Because a pensioner, for example, can top up her pension with a mini job.
This is most evident with the students. The traffic light promised you a one-off payment of 200 euros, but it is not yet clear when or how it will be paid out. In addition, the social association VdK has calculated that a person who has the status of "student" could be relieved by the packages of either almost 1500 euros or just 200 euros - depending on whether they still have a part-time job, receive BAFÖG or nothing of which applies.
The system that relieves traffic lights in the energy crisis, considers administration expert Farber to be poorly thought out and, especially outside of the normal employee-employer relationship, to be "not suitable for enforcement". She therefore proposes a register that stores who pays the money - but not the account numbers. Because there are already several proven ways for state transfers: child benefit, unemployment benefit I and II, BAFÖG, housing benefit, pension. And the employees could be reached through their regular salary payments. What is missing, however, is an overview that records who should receive direct government payments from where and that prevents money from flowing twice.
Farber sees a new central body for direct government payments, as proposed by Finance Minister Lindner, but is skeptical for another reason: data protection. Because if the state merges account data and tax ID at the federal level, it would have a database of all personal bank details. Should the government be allowed to have such a list?
But the administration expert's approach also has a catch. If the state is already transferring money directly to the citizens, people should at least know why they got it. That would not necessarily be the case with Farber's proposal. The one-time payment would come together with your salary or pension. "I think the state should also be able to support the communication of the energy premiums that it now wants to pay out and expect the paying bodies to mark this accordingly," she concedes.
