German Taxpayers Federation
The Taxpayers Association ( BdSt ) is a membership organization that was founded in 1949.
When his goals, the club is called the reduction of taxes and duties, as well as the reduction of bureaucracy, control waste and public debt. However, he is not entitled to pay tax.
Idea and start-up
In the late 1920s wanted the business owner of the Darmstadt and National Bank ( Danatbank ), Jakob Goldschmidt, with leading industrialists, including Robert Bosch, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and Karl Adolf Tilo Freiherr von Wilmowsky call a taxpayer initiative. This was based on a written by the financial expert Günter Schmölders study of the Swedish taxpayer movement and its transferability is based on Germany. The foundation of this initiative was not completed. Günter Schmölders 1932 successor to the Financial scientist Karl Bräuer to a professorship at the University of Breslau.
1949 were Karl Bräuer and the Berlin tax advisor Hermann Wunderlich of the Allied Military Government of the country Württemberg- Baden permission for the establishment of a taxpayer organization at the country level. Another co-founder was the business editor of the " Stuttgarter Zeitung " Henry E. Kunze. On 21 October 1949, the " Taxpayers Württemberg- Baden eV " was founded in Stuttgart and a little later state associations in the other countries of the three Western occupation zones as well as the " Bureau of the Taxpayers Association " as an umbrella organization whose first president Karl Bräuer was and this function until 1960 held. According to him, the 1957 performance units awarded Karl Bräuer Prize and in 1965, the Karl Bräuer Institute were named.
Organization
The registered association is non-partisan, according to its statutes, independent and nonprofit. The club had claims to 2000, about 426,000 members in 2005 about 395,000 members and 2010 approximately 310,000 members. Thus, the BdSt is the largest taxpayer organization in the world. In addition to membership fees and donations he has no other sources of income. It consists of 15 independent national associations and has the German taxpayer Institute, which was until 2013 the name Karl Bräuer Institute ( KBI ), a private financial research institution. The covenant is registered in the lobby list at the German Bundestag.
The BdSt indicates that its members from 60 to 70 percent were made of companies in the industrial middle class and the other members are in their majority individuals.
The association is based in Berlin. The former President of the BdSt were:
Publications
Every autumn the BdSt published the Black Book The wasting of public funds. In it, the club regularly collects the charge that the public authorities fail invest billions of euros annually. His figures are based on estimates of SAIs, who assume that up to 95 percent of all public investments are made correctly. Conversely, the BdSt expects a waste of 5 to 10 percent, which currently corresponds to a sum of about 30 billion euros.
In this figure, addressed at the presentation of the Federal Court of Auditors report for 2006, the current President of the Federal Court, however, said he could understand the numbers in any way that he considers the estimation of BdSt frivolous, since it is not published his calculation bases, and the Federal Court go from approximately 2.2 billion from. The Federal Court of Auditors criticized generally the projected numbers and faulty evidence used in the black book in his estimation.
The members' magazine The taxpayer is published monthly with a circulation of 450,000 copies. At the entrance of its headquarters, the association published on the debt clock in its estimation ( national debt of the past year an estimated expected borrowing for the current year ) the German government debt.
Test cases and other activities
The BdSt supports a number of test cases. This enables the association applies in particular to his opinion system adverse and unjustified tax changes and laws. Among the best known methods include the action against the abolition of the traveling allowance. On 9 December 2008, the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court gave the plaintiff supported by the Association Law ( ref. 2 BvL 1/ 07).
Every three years, gives the Taxpayers' the Karl- Bräuer Prize for outstanding journalistic and scientific papers on the German public sector. In addition, he calls each year from the taxpayer Remembrance Day.
The Saxon Taxpayers Association annually awards the spin axis for the waste of taxpayer money.
Reception
The claim of the taxpayers to represent the interests of all taxpayers, is considered by the political scientist and member of the SPD Peter Delete as " part of a PR strategy ". From the composition of members mainly medium-sized entrepreneurs and freelancers are represented in the federal government; of the programmatic orientation ago he converges with the FDP.
Similarly, in a study of union- Hans Boeckler Foundation explains that the BdSt is not a representative picture of the tax-paying population. The membership structure affects it to the political demands of the Taxpayers Association: leaner government and low tax rates. This assessment is consistent with the findings that had won a study for the department youth work and policy of the board of IG Metall already half a year before. Wolfgang Lieb ( SPD ) refers to the studies of BdSt as " socially subversive ," Kai Eicker - Wolf and Patrick Schreiner throw the covenant before the name to operate " misnomer ", Karl Weiss threw in the Berlin Umschau the federal government in April 2010, manipulation of statistics before.
Peter Delete criticized a cooperation with the Hamburg -Mannheimer insurance and the level of salaries of former President Karlheinz Däke: By splitting up into three different salaries (as President of the Association, as President of the Karl Bräuer Institute and a board member of the Association of taxpayers in NRW) conceals Däke his total income in the amount of 187 000 euros.