rechte, zweite Spalte

Direct Taxes

The German legislators have provided for an astonishing wealth of taxes to collect the financial means for the rather costly activities of all kinds of public authorities, from the Federal Government over State Government down to City / County governments. Taxes vary from the very important income tax and wage tax down to rather trivial taxes like Vergnügungssteuer. Despite a number of attempts by rather prominent scholars, there is still lacking an overall, contradiction free system of taxes in Germany. Thus, we should be content with a rather broad classification:


the first and most important difference is that direct taxes are imposed on such taxpayers who have to economically bear the expense, whereas the person liable to pay indirect taxes is in all cases - with very few exceptions - different from the person who finally bears the expense: although the shop owner is liable to pay VAT to the tax authority, he may collect the amount of VAT payable on an individual turn over from his customer.

Direct Taxes: