High earners
Higher earners are people who have an above-average income . However, there is no generally binding definition of these terms.
Comparable terms are top earners , top earners or top earners , denoting someone “who belongs to the group of those who earn the most money”. A distinction between the “normal” and the “highest” incomes is difficult and mostly subjective . The regularly published income tax statistics provide an indication. The terms are often used as political buzzwords , for example in tax and social policy, but also in connection with the financial and banking crisis. For the technical issues see distribution of income .
Germany
An example of the use of the word "top earners" in parlance can be found in income tax statistics, where the group of top earners has incomes of more than 180,000 euros per year.
The chairman of the German trade union federation Michael Sommer criticized the salaries of managers in 2009 and recalled that the rule previously applied was that the director might earn ten or twenty times that of a skilled worker and not one hundred or two hundred times.
In connection with ancillary income from members of parliament, a special list is published by parliament watch, which is also entitled "top earners", but is only limited to the group of members of the Bundestag.
Often people are declared to be “higher earners” with significantly lower incomes. In the 1994 Bundestag election campaign, the then SPD chancellor candidate Rudolf Scharping demanded a supplementary tax levy for higher earners. At that time, the SPD defined single people with an income of 50,000 DM or more (according to current purchasing power approx. 36,500 euros) and married people from 100,000 DM as “higher earners”. Since even skilled workers' incomes were sometimes higher, these classifications met with strong criticism. Scharping's attempt to explain these values as a mix-up of gross and net income first led to public ridicule and later contributed to Scharping's defeat in the election.
The FDP is sometimes accused of being the “party of the higher earners”. In fact, the former FDP General Secretary Werner Hoyer first used this formulation in the 1994 federal election campaign - as a reaction to the above mentioned lapse by Rudolf Scharping . His statement read: “We are the party of high earners because we want everyone to earn better”.
The party researcher Franz Walter published a book in April 2010 with the title Yellow or Green ?: A short history of parties in the higher-income middle in Germany .
Different delimitations
Top rate of income tax
In the 2005 Bundestag election campaign, the SPD demanded "that high individual incomes - from an annual income of 250,000 euros (single) or 500,000 euros (married) - should be used more to finance necessary government tasks - above all for education and research - and therefore a change Pay 3 percentage points higher top tax rate ". At that time, the top tax rate was still 42 percent, while in 2013 higher earners with annual taxable income of EUR 250,731 or more pay a top tax rate of 45 percent.
Social security contribution assessment ceilings
The contribution assessment limits for the statutory pension insurance are often identified as the limit value for higher earners, as they describe the gross income from which contributions to the statutory pension insurance are no longer levied. It is true that this value increases annually; nevertheless it is often used in discussions because it is understandable for everyone.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michaela Hutterer: High earners, the. In: Focus Online . August 2, 2010, accessed October 14, 2018 .
- ^ Duden online: Top earners , accessed on April 28, 2013.
- ↑ For example, annual income tax statistics - Trade Series 14, Series 7.1.1, 2008, "Table 3 on page eighth
- ↑ http://www.abendblatt.de/wirtschaft/article953440/Studie-Bankchefs-Spitzenverdiener-trotz-Finanzkrise.html
- ↑ "Annual income tax statistics - Fachserie 14 Reihe 7.1.1 - 2008", page 18
- ↑ http://www.t-online.de/wirtschaft/id_17665944/spitzenverdiener-sollen-ihre-gehaelter-offenlegen.html
- ↑ List of members of the Bundestag with the highest additional income in 2012 ( memento of the original from April 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the pages of parliamentwatch.de
- ↑ http://www.udo-leuschner.de/liberalismus/fdp30.htm
- ↑ SPD election manifesto for the 2005 Bundestag election, July 4, 2005, page 38 (PDF; 184 kB).
