News

07.02.2024 - Japan is establishing a modern evaluation system for tax expenditures. Tomohiro Kimura, Deputy Director from the ministry in charge, SOUMU, as well as Otoe Yoda, Arisa Kudo and Toko Kawagoe from Deloitte Tokyo talk to Eva Gerhards and Michael Thöne about two decades of FiFo experience with strengthening subsidy control in Germany and about the institute's trademark evaluation system for tax subsidies.

15.01.2024 - The FiFo evaluations of numerous German tax expenditures have put agro diesel and the motor vehicle tax exemption in agriculture on the BMF's definitive cut list according to "Wirtschaftswoche". Yet in the hearing of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag, Michael Thöne talks more about the reduction of subsidies in the air transport tax and outlines a competitively fair reduction of the general diesel privilege based on the Belgian model.

12.01.2024 - Municipal road construction contributions, a Prussian invention dating back to 1893, are extremely unpopular and have been abolished in almost all German Länder for a good five years. Also in North Rhine-Westphalia, they are now to be abolished once and for all. In his expert hearing statement, Michael Thöne outlines the evaluation criteria against which the non-contributory, low-bureaucracy and incentive-based financing of road construction must be measured. In this light, he characterises the mechanism now proposed as a good interim model.

09.01.2024 - Social Europe is at its strongest when it does not become a European welfare state ahead of time, argues Michael Thöne in the newly published final volume of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's "Germany Trilogy". After "Deutschland – Ländersache?!“ (2020) and "Deutschland und sein Geld“ (2022), the third book "Deutschland und sein Sozialstaat. Erfolgsgeschichte mit Zukunft?" (2024), which was initiated by the late FiFo Policy Fellow Jens Bullerjahn, offers a broad kaleidoscope of numerous contributions and discussions on social issues and social policy on 540 pages. All three books can be downloaded and ordered here. 

12.12.2023 - The 2023 and 2024 federal budgets of Germany stand on the brink. This would not be necessary, as Michael Thöne shows in a digital presentation in Munich. Numerous subsidies and tax privileges have been evaluated over the last 20 years. Many of these have been assessed very critically - usually without any political consequences. The current budget crisis and the major transformations that Germany has to cope with provide a perfect opportunity to abolish outdated privileges on a wide front. This will free up a lot of funding for consolidation and mitigating selective hardships, for tax cuts and transformation financing. The side effect: a simpler and fairer tax system.