AfD on finance and taxes

The AfD wants to permanently secure the unrestricted use of cash and write it into the Grundgesetz (Germany's constitution). It rejects a digital euro issued by the ECB. It justifies this as protection against surveillance and expropriation.

The AfD wants to keep cash. The right to use cash should be in the constitution. The AfD is against a digital euro. It says: Without cash, the state can watch every payment.

According to the platform, cash is being phased out step by step with backing from the federal government, the IMF and the ECB. The AfD sees cash as a fee-free store of value and a safeguard against negative interest rates. In its view, purely electronic payments would give the state and banks control over all money flows. It also says electronic systems are prone to outages and manipulation. The party rejects any legal or de facto obligation to pay electronically.

The AfD wants tax relief for citizens and businesses. Among other things, it calls for ending the solidarity surcharge, offsetting bracket creep, lowering energy and corporate taxes, and scrapping the CO2 levy and emissions trading. The beer tax on German beers would also be dropped.

The AfD wants lower taxes. The solidarity surcharge should end. There should be no more charge on CO2. Taxes on electricity and energy should go down. Companies should pay less tax. The tax on German beer should also end.

The platform bases its demands on a tax and contribution burden of nearly half of income, which the AfD says weakens the willingness to work. Through the Bundesrat, the party wants to demand compensation for bracket creep and an end to the solidarity surcharge. The combined rate of corporate income tax and trade tax is to fall, as are electricity and energy taxes. Sole proprietorships and partnerships would be taxed only on withdrawn profits, putting them on a par with corporations. Lifting the beer tax on beer brewed in Germany is meant to save Saxon breweries about 50 million euros.

The AfD wants to avoid new debt and focus the budget on core tasks. Staff in government agencies would be reduced, except in the police and schools. The party wants to save mainly on asylum and immigration, on funding for associations and NGOs, and on climate subsidies.

The AfD does not want new debt. The state should spend less money. Government offices should have fewer jobs. This does not apply to police and schools. The AfD wants to save on asylum, on associations and on climate.

The platform calls for a soundly prepared budget in which one-time revenues are not handed out as election gifts. Staff growth in the administration is to end, with reductions carried out in a socially acceptable way. The AfD describes funding for associations and non-governmental organizations as left-wing ideological projects. It calls subsidies in climate policy questionable. Avoiding new debt is meant to leave room to respond to future crises.

The AfD wants to give states and municipalities more money and improve the position of rural communities when state funds are distributed. Fiscal equalization should also take a municipality's land area into account. Municipalities should gain enough leeway that the Grundsteuer (property tax) can be dropped.

The AfD wants to give towns more money. Rural towns above all should get more. Big cities should be favored less. The property tax should later end completely. That is a tax on land and houses.

According to the platform, municipalities have been given ever more tasks without matching increases in funding. The AfD wants to raise the general formula-based grants for rural municipalities and limit the weighting factor that, in its view, favors large cities. In the state's fiscal equalization system, the area to be maintained and other criteria would count alongside population. Higher grants are meant to let municipalities do without tax increases and charges on adjacent property owners. Tasks and decision-making powers are to be decentralized.

The AfD wants to push at the federal level for an end to the Grunderwerbsteuer (real estate transfer tax) on owner-occupied housing. For a first owner-occupied property, the tax would be capped at 1 percent. Road construction charges are to be dropped throughout Saxony.

People who buy a house pay a tax. The AfD wants to end this tax when people live in the house themselves. For a first home it should be only 1 percent. Charges for road building should also end in Saxony.

The platform argues that a tax should not make moving harder in a mobile and aging society. When housing is scarce, it says, the real estate transfer tax puts employees who relocate for work at a disadvantage. The AfD wants to achieve the abolition for owner-occupied housing at the federal level. The charges that adjacent property owners pay for road construction would be eliminated in every Saxon municipality.

The AfD wants to uncover and punish the waste of tax money more consistently. The Saxon Court of Audit would be allowed to impose sanctions. Decision-makers are to be personally liable.

The AfD wants this: People who waste tax money should be punished. The Court of Audit checks how Saxony spends its money. In the future it should be able to impose penalties itself. Those responsible should also pay with their own money.

The platform notes that minor tax offenses are prosecuted while wasting public funds usually has no consequences. Alongside criminal proceedings, liability would apply without the usual protection for officials, so office holders would answer personally. The Court of Audit itself would become responsible for fines and recovery claims. According to the AfD, the aim is to build awareness of personal responsibility in office.