German retirees who continue working set to earn €2,000 a month tax-free
German retirees who continue working set to earn €2,000 a month tax-free
www.theguardian.com
German retirees who continue working set to earn €2,000 a month tax-free
41 comments
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In my opinion this is extremely unfair. To earn 2000€ after taxes and contributions to social security as a single person in germany you have to earn at least 3000€ a month and because social security is shared between employer and employee, you cost your employer closer to 3600€. So almost half of what you earn goes into taxes and contributions to social security. Over 500€ just for the pensions. And those 500€ don't even include how much taxes are subsidizing the pension. At the same time a pensioner can get as much as you do(maybe even working full time for it), in addition to getting their pension that you are subsidizing and not pay any taxes on it.
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The unfair part is that pensioners shouldn't have to work at all, and on top of that these rules are biased for pensioners in jobs that tend to be higher-paying in the first place - most of the jobs that are practically impossible to do for pensioners because they are too physically demanding are low-paying and often have workers drop out way before pension age because of back problems and the like.
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Yep… why not redistribute the tax load, make everything up to 2000€ tax free, increase taxes for higher income levels (>10k for example) drastically
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In my opinion this is extremely unfair.
Up to this level yes, but they are not the only one that have some exceptions. Normally you can have some earning tax-free, only a way lower amount (here is about 5000€/year for example)
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Only if that's your only income. And nobody can live from 5.000€ per year
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"Civil servants, tradespeople, the self-employed and those employed in agricultural and forestry industries are excluded from the scheme" this has to be the worst year to be german farmer: first, they made deal with mercosur (which was a pet project of von der leyen) and now this.
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But, die Grüüüüünen!
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...find these things pretty dangerous, it is a question of time that the economic system made financially unsustainable for retirees to retire so you get a society full of workers till their death. Rest must be legally imposed by intervention and social measures or any unintervented economic system will juice us out till the last bit of us.
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My coworker is happy about that. He is 70, single, healthy, and having a halftime office job keeps him busy, happy, and close to his coworker-friends. I can't imagine him sitting at home, twiddling thumbs. That would probably kill him, or at least drive him insane.
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Good for your coworker, but what justifies him not paying taxes on 2.000€ per month, while university students can earn a maximum 556€ per month without paying taxes and social security.
Especially considering that your coworker probably has a considerable wealth built up already, and gets his retirement on top.
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This is probably false. They surely mean 2000 Euro a year.
41 comments
Well, such measures are necessary when, instead of treating urgently needed foreign workers with respect, you prefer to resort to racism.
Once again, this is proof of the consequences of the inhumane rhetoric of the CDU, CSU, and AfD: it is completely understandable that no one wants to work in a country where they are treated with hostility.
But no, the German Government just carries on with their despicable racism and pretends that one of the most important aspects of the migration debate is not that numerous industries urgently need workers from abroad. Since the shortage of skilled workers cannot, of course, be covered by idiotic Nazis, pensioners are now supposed to step in. It's really unbelievable.
Despite racism, Mexicans still go to the US and Nepalese to Arabic countries. How much worse is current German racism?
I am not able to directly compare current racism, but german racism has historically proven to be quite "efficient".
Wait, we are talking of the same nation that with Merkel accepted millions of immigrants ?
Mmmm... One should ask why they are treated with hostility, if that is true.
The same industries that are laying off worker because they are downsizing, since they are stagnant on their success for years and now they are left behind ? (for reference, the car industry).
Or we are talking of the same industries that relocated the production to cheaper nations, lose all the local expertise and now discover that if a job is not required in the country, people will not train themself for it ?
The shortage of skilled people also cannot be covered by immigrants in the moment they arrive, they need to be trained (maybe for years) , you need to have the time to let them to make a working experience and only then you have a skilled worker.
The thruth is that if you want to welcome immigrants, you need to plan it, you cannot just let them in and then hope that everything work out just fine.
What I'm getting at is that the shortage of skilled workers in Germany is a significant problem—across many industries. That is simply a fact.
Another fact is demographic change, which makes it perfectly clear that Germany will be even more dependent on foreign workers in the future.
Nevertheless, our conservative parties (and the far-right parties anyway) are conducting the migration debate as if there were too many foreigners in Germany. This is extremely counterproductive, because the focus should actually be on how to make it easier to recognize foreign professional qualifications, how to ensure that people are properly trained, and so on and so forth.
And as for your spurious argument about Merkel: more than 6,500 Syrians work as doctors in Germany, representing a considerable proportion of the medical profession – most of these people came to Germany as asylum seekers and all are making an important contribution to society here. The goddamn Nazis, who think they are better just because they have German citizenship, generally make no contribution to society at all – on the contrary, they are destroying our society with their hateful, stupid bullshit.
A lot has happened since. And because Merkel government didn't actually handle this mass refugee influx well, the people coming in were kinda stranded. I remember seeing a lot of homeless refugees with kids (!) in parks and other places where we usually didn't expect homeless people at all. Germans don't like seeing that, so they blame the refugees for ruining the peace. Sure everyone was happy to accepts millions of refugees as long as it happened somewhere else! And even if this situation has improved a lot, more and more Germans find new ways to blame them for their own miserable lives. Populist media and politics play a huge role in this. Covid and an unstable government after Merkel did the rest. It will take a while to come to our senses again, if at all.