Clemens Fuest: Erst wachsen, dann vielleicht besteuern
Die Sorge, KI schmälere Einkommen und Sozialkassen, ist unbelegt. Der Staat kann sein Steuersystem später anpassen. Erst muss die Wirtschaft das Potenzial nutzen. Ein Gastbeitrag.
In an era of rapid artificial intelligence (AI) expansion, many people experience fear and concern. This includes worry about displaced human labor and shrinking wage incomes. Such outcomes would not only affect workers, but also social security systems largely funded by taxes on wage incomes. This raises the question of whether and how the tax and levy system should be altered to ensure its continued functionality in the future.
Bundesminister for Digital, Karsten Wildberger (CDU), has proposed imposing a special tax on AI revenues. He argues that in an AI-transformed economy, taxes should be levied where value creation increases. The revenue would be used to finance retraining and further education of employees. However, it is not easy to determine which revenues should be taxed specifically.
AI is an instrument widely used across various sectors. One might define a group of goods and services particularly associated with AI usage. These could include payments to companies like Anthropic and OpenAI for the use of their models or expenditures on high-performance chips.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
