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Comment by cutitout | Hacker News Reader

I'm very happy to see that the German tax break is basically the opposite of what Deutsche Bank Research suggested, namely extra taxes for people who WFH, because they "contribute less public transport and the economy", and should "pay a tax for that privilege". They suggested the employer pay it, but still.

https://www.handelsblatt.com/finanzen/banken-versicherungen/...

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Lol. Less transport = less wear on the extra expensive roads. Less pollution, less crowd, less money for oil industry. If anything, people should be blessed and get tax returns for WFH.

I suspect that was a proposition from some out of touch internal bank junior who had no idea how badly that would go down with the general public let alone the whole "bringing the employer into disrepute" aspect.

Well, the article speaks of "Deutsche Bank strategists" and "experts", and it is Deutsche Bank Research that made the suggestion. Digging further, the person who made the suggestion is a "Macro Strategist" doing "Macro Research", certainly not just a junior.

https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000051...

there are countless articles to be found about this if you just look for anything like "working from home tax deutsche bank", for example:

https://www.dw.com/en/deutsche-bank-proposal-to-levy-income-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/deutsche-bank-proposes-a-5pe...

Certainly was behaving as one or maybe the German banking / & regulators are just that arrogant.

Sounds dumb.

There are forms of self-employment in germany that pays less taxes explicitly because they types of work don't require as much public infrastructure as other types of work.

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