The tank discount comes for three months, 30 cents should be saved on petrol, 14 cents on diesel. Anyone who fills up with 50 liters pays between 7 and 15 euros less for a tank filling. That’s neat. Let’s see what price we pay for it: wasted taxes, wrong steering effect, chaos on the streets? The risks are enormous.
The tank discount is debatable. The FDP supporters are fundamentally against subsidies because they are in favor of the free market economy – and if frontman Lindner nevertheless implements this discount, it is not without a certain irony.
Economists criticize that this relieves those who have several cars or drive a lot – and these are mostly people who can also afford high fuel prices. I exclude courier drivers. In addition, less oil is not consumed in this way, the steering effect is gone. The experts rarely agree this time, regardless of whether they are more close to the employer or the trade union. And who can disagree with that.
It will be exciting from June 1st for several reasons. Are there bottlenecks because the Germans, the land of poets, thinkers and penny pinchers, roll to the pumps with empty vehicle tanks? And the gas station operators can’t meet the demand, drivers suddenly find themselves stranded? Or only really lower the prices after a few days because they know that the vehicle owners will be dragging their way to them on the last leg at the beginning of June? Maybe there are also traffic jams in front of the petrol pumps, causing chaos on the streets. Many scenarios are conceivable, I just don’t have the imagination for a smooth process.
Another point is very important to me: Even if politicians always sell it as if they are doing something good for us citizens, it is our tax money that they are spending. If they say goodbye to a tank discount, then that’s not a generous gesture that Mr. Lindner can sell as an election gift. The people pay the taxes, he manages our money.
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I expect that politicians have thought this through carefully so that the mineral oil companies do not get rich from the discount. Because the gas station operators could already slowly raise the prices and then lower the prices from a higher level – it doesn’t have to be 30 cents for petrol. 20 cents are enough in the first step, that looks a lot cheaper. A high recommended retail price, then a hefty discount – anyone who has ever bought furniture knows what I am writing about here.
Once again in all clarity: I expect this subsidy to reach us citizens. I don’t want any of my taxes to end up in the pockets of the oil companies. Politicians have to pay attention to that. And when it comes that you can’t control that very precisely, then I reply: Yes, that’s exactly the task. Or carry out some other relief measure that needs to be checked.
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Because tax revenue is one side of the coin, spending is another. When a comedian like Mario Barth uncovers 161 billion (!) euros in wasted taxes, then something is going wrong here. More hateful people also mention the word “banana republic”. I wouldn’t go that far, but a simple calculation in the household book says: Every euro that is not wasted does not have to be collected additionally. And that brings me back to politics, which has to ensure that no more taxes are wasted with the tank discount.
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