Farm tax clause
The farm tax clause was a regulation in the old-age insurance of farmers , according to which an old-age pension only existed until August 8, 2018 if the beneficiary gave up his farm.
The farm tax clause was introduced in 1957 with the farmers' pension scheme. The agricultural policy objective was thus pursued
- to encourage the early handover of farms to young farmers in order to
- to counteract obsolescence and
- to ensure long-term cultivation of agricultural land.
In the long term, this clause encouraged the disappearance of smaller farms in favor of large ones.
Unconstitutionality
On May 23, 2018, the Federal Constitutional Court (Ref .: 1 BvR 97/14 and 1 BvR 2392/14) declared the farm tax clause to be partially unconstitutional. There is no hardship regulation for cases in which the livelihood is not secured by consequences of the clause, for example one cannot find a successor for the farm or the farm can only be sold at such a low purchase price or rent that the income does not secure the livelihood. Both regulations on the right to an old-age pension for the spouse of a farmer - in each case before and after the amendment to the law on January 1, 2016 - were declared unconstitutional. According to the old regulation, the farmer's husband's pension was dependent on giving up the farm, which violated the protection of marriage and the family under Article 6 of the Basic Law. With the new regulation, this requirement no longer applies. This made it possible for farmers to hand over their farm to their spouse, which, if the husband is exempted from compulsory insurance in the farmers' pension scheme, would in fact lead to the removal of the farm tax clause. This unreasonably disadvantages single farmers. Therefore, on November 30, 2018, the German Bundestag resolved that farmers no longer have to sell their agricultural property retrospectively from August 9, 2018 in order to claim a pension from the farmers' old-age insurance.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Stefan Thissen: Bundestag overturns farm tax clause . Retrieved December 4, 2018.