An income tax tariff is incompatible with the constitution insofar as it provides relief for spouses assessed together through the application of the splitting tariff, while lone parents are not adequately taken into account even when other tax relief measures are taken into account.
As a control splitting III (also Ehegattensplitting judgment), the decision is Federal Constitutional Court denotes that a Ehegattensplitting confirmed as constitutional and compensatory essential as long as the legislator on a income tax holds with the combination of joint assessment and progressive rate.
According to this decision, the legislature is not forced to extend splitting to single parents (widowed, divorced, separated, unmarried). However, he must also exempt parts of their income that are intended for childcare, as this income can only be spent once. The income tax tariff is unconstitutional as long as this group of parents is not sufficiently relieved when other taxation instruments are taken into account.
Detailed statements
The splitting procedure corresponds to the principle of taxation according to the ability to pay. It is based on the assumption that spouses living together form a community of acquisition and consumption in which one spouse shares half of the income and burdens of the other, as is the opinion of the federal government in this process. The splitting thus ties in with the economic reality of the intact average marriage, in which a transfer of tax efficiency takes place between the partners.
If single parents have to work and are therefore unable to look after their children themselves, they are forced to have the children looked after by third parties for a fee. Such expenses do not constitute a free use of income. Since they are unavoidable, they reduce the taxpayer's disposable income and thus reduce his economic efficiency. Tax legislation does not take this into account.
There are no objective grounds for justification for the stricter taxation of single people with children, which does not take into account the reduction in performance caused by increased care costs due to work . Therefore, this violation of the principle of taxation based on the ability to pay leads to an encroachment that constitutes a violation of fair taxation and is therefore incompatible with Article 3 (1) in conjunction with Article 6 (1) of the Basic Law. This becomes even clearer when the taxation of childless married couples is used for comparison. These are assessed according to the splitting tariff, but do not have to provide any services or expenses for children.
The legislature has to decide how the unconstitutional taxation of single persons with children is to be eliminated:
He can remedy the deficiency in tax law himself. In principle, however, he also has the choice of ignoring or only marginally considering circumstances that reduce performance in tax law and instead defining them as eligible social law facts. The consideration of the reduced performance is then outsourced from tax law and assigned as a promotional task to social law, as was done, for example, when the child allowance was replaced by child benefit. If this happens, the economic capacity neglected in tax law must be taken into account when determining the social benefit or when changing it.
If the legislature decides to take account of childcare costs, which is required for single parents, by means of a tax regulation, the requirement of taxation based on the ability to pay requires, in principle, expenses that single parents have to make for the care of their children, insofar as they are inevitable, to be taken into account for tax purposes as a reduction in income in the amount actually incurred.
In order to rule out a violation of fair taxation (Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law) and the protection requirement for marriage (Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law), the new legal regulation to be adopted must not place single parents in a better tax position than married couples with children.
Other solutions for the taxation of single parents or for the new regulation of family taxation, for which the Bavarian state government (family-related partial splitting) and the government of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate have, for example, or which have been proposed in the literature, remain unaffected by the legislature.
Individual evidence
↑ so also the justification of the government draft for the Tax Amendment Act 1958, which led to the splitting, BT-Drs. III / 260, p. 34; Expert opinion of the Tax Reform Commission, 1971, Section II, ESt, LSt, margin no. 554; also justification of the government draft of a third tax reform law BT-Drs. 7/1470, p. 222
↑ cf. J. Lang, The assessment basis of income tax, Cologne habilitation thesis 1981, Chapter 6. D II
↑ cf. Scientific Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry of Finance, BAnz. 1958 No. 81, p. 5 [6], No. 17: Inclusion of single people with children in the splitting
^ R. Charlier, Steuerberater-Jahrbuch 1979/80, p. 479 [500]; H. Haller, The Taxes, 3rd ed., 1981, p. 69: Familien-Vollsplitting; J. Lang, The assessment basis of income tax, Cologne habilitation thesis 1981, Chapter 6. D III: Family real splitting
