Mandate holder contribution
Mandate holder contributions (also called mandate holder fees , in Austria called party taxes) are regular payments by elected officials ( members of parliament , full-time politicians such as mayors , supervisory board mandate holders , etc.) to the parties and trade unions that they have nominated for the respective tasks. The mandate holder fees are formally voluntary, the parties and trade unions have no legal claim. However, the mandate holder risks not being nominated again if he refuses to pay. Some of the payments are made directly, while others benefit the coffers of the parliamentary groups, subdivisions or foundations. They are usually regulated in the statutes or financial regulations of the respective parties or organization.
Mandate holder contributions according to political party law
Mandate holder contributions are defined in the Political Parties Act (PartG). While membership fees are regular cash benefits that a member pays in accordance with statutory provisions (Section 27 (1) sentence 1 PartG), membership fees are regular cash benefits that a holder of a public electoral office (election holder) makes to his party in addition to his membership fee (Section 27 Para. 1 sentence 2 PPA). They are also referred to as “mandate taxes” or “party taxes”. Mandate holders are members of parliaments and governments, directly or indirectly elected district, community and local councils as well as mayors and district administrators. Membership fees, like membership fees or donations, count towards the so-called donations from natural persons (Section 18 (3) No. 3 PartG) and make a significant contribution to the financing of parties .
This must be distinguished from the contributions that MEPs make to their parliamentary groups.
With the amendment to the Political Parties Act in 2002, the legislature expressly provided for the collection of mandate holder contributions. The legislature thus obviously also assumes the permissibility of their collection.
The justification for the mandate holder fees is, among other things, that the beneficiary party branches provide many kinds of monetary benefits for their MPs and council members.
From the legal definition in Section 27 (1), sentence 2, however, it follows that the PartG does not assume a legal obligation to pay the mandate holder contributions. In contrast to membership fees, which, according to the wording of the law, have their legal basis in the statutory provisions (Section 27, Paragraph 1, Clause 1 of the PartG), the law does not rely on an obligation to pay for mandate holder contributions, but on the effect of the service, i.e. the payment itself . With regard to the disclosure requirements , the PartG treats mandate holder contributions as donations and not as membership fees (Section 25 (3)). The Federal Ministry of Finance also assumes that mandate holder contributions are voluntary for tax treatment. If mandate holder contributions are voluntary, they cannot be enforced .
Regulations of the parties
The statutes of all parties represented in the Bundestag provide for the obligation to pay mandate holder contributions. The respective amount of the special contributions is not determined in any of these statutes , except for the CSU , but is determined by certain organs of the sending organizations or agreed with the parties concerned. With regard to the binding nature of the obligation to provide elected representatives, the provisions of the parties differ considerably. Some expressly speak of voluntary benefits. In the case of others, failure to perform leads to automatic loss of membership.
Amount of mandate holder fees
The amount of the electoral fee varies. While the unions demand that most of the supervisory board bonuses be paid out, party politicians usually pay between 10% and 20% of their salaries or members' allowances .
In 1989 the parties stated to the Federal Constitutional Court that the following proportions of the contributions would be attributable to mandate holder fees: The Greens were well ahead at 50 percent, while the proportion of the CDU, CSU and SPD in 1989 was between 18 and 29 percent. In 1993 the Weizsäcker Commission estimated the share of mandate holder fees at 20 to 25 percent. Charges for elected officials are therefore a relevant part of party financing.
The importance of the special contributions for the finances of the parties also varies. The share of mandate holder contributions in total income varies from 4.6% to 17%. A predominant part of the mandate holder contributions flow to the lower divisions of the parties (district and local associations), for which these represent in part the main source of income.
In 2003, according to the annual report, a total of 22.5 million euros were made in favor of the SPD ; this corresponds to a share of 12.5% of the party's income. At the CDU it was a total of € 18 million (12.9%). The mandate holders of the FDP contributed € 1.3 million (4.6%). The predecessor of the Left Party , the PDS, collected € 1.1 million in electoral contributions (5.1%). The elected representatives of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen party contributed a total of € 4.5 million (17%). A total of € 3.3 million mandate holder contributions (6.9%) were made in favor of the CSU.
Constitutional concerns
In the report of the commission of independent experts on questions of political party financing, a number of points were noted that were constitutionally questionable and corrected:
- Contributions to mandate holders must (at least formally) be voluntary
- the earlier practice of the Bundestag administration to withhold the taxes directly from the diets and to transfer them to the parliamentary groups
- Charges for elected officials must not encourage covert party financing
See also
swell
- ↑ German Bundestag online version
- ↑ BVerfGE 85, 264 (311)
- ↑ BT-Drs. 12/4425, p. 18
- ^ Report of the commission of independent experts on questions of party financing, Berlin, July 18, 2001, page 94 online version ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )