A Journey Through Germany’s Tax Laws

Get ready to hit the autobahn and explore the world of German taxes! We'll navigate the complexities of Germany’s corporate tax structure, including the combined federal and local rates, and unravel the complexities of local trade taxes and the real estate transaction tax, exploring their impact on businesses and property investments.
 
 Alex Mengden, Global Policy Analyst, joins Kyle Hulehan to discuss Germany's unique federal system shaping state and local taxes, the intricacies of the value-added tax (VAT), and the substantial labor tax burden.

Links:
 https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/germany-trade-tax-rates/ 

Transcript

Kyle Hulehan: 0:00

Get ready to hit the auto bond and explore the world of German taxes. We'll navigate Germany's corporate tax structure, including the combined, federal, and local rates and unraveled the complexities of local trade taxes and the real estate transaction tax. Exploring their impact on businesses and property investments. Hello, and welcome to the Deduction, a Tax Foundation podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Houlihan. And today we are joined by Alex Mengden, Global Policy Analyst here at TF. Alex, how are you doing today?

Alex Mengden: 0:30

Doing really well. Thanks for having me on for the first time now.

Kyle Hulehan: 0:33

Yeah, it's great to have you here. And we are, we're truly international today. Something that will probably be happening more frequently now, since we launched tax foundation Europe a few months ago. where in Germany are you joining us from Alex?

Alex Mengden: 0:46

I'm living in Munich right now. very close, to the Alps, and, great, great weather here.

Kyle Hulehan: 0:52

That's awesome. Yeah, no, I, I'm from Germany. I'm actually, I'm curious if you've ever heard of my brother in law and sister literally last week, just moved to Germany full time, my brother in law is German, and I'm curious if you've ever heard of a small town called Gangecken?

Alex Mengden: 1:08

no, I have no idea. Ah,

Kyle Hulehan: 1:10

Okay, that's fine. I mean, I figured you didn't, but I just thought for, you know, the content that maybe if you had, it would be funny or if you knew somebody from there, but it's like 30 minutes outside of Stuttgart. I don't know if

Alex Mengden: 1:20

Okay. Well, I, I, okay and I know stood good, but there are lots of, lots of little, towns around, so I wouldn't know that one.

Kyle Hulehan: 1:28

And

Alex Mengden: 1:28

Stu Gut. Yeah.

Kyle Hulehan: 1:29

okay. I'm working on my, I'm working on my German. I'm gonna have to get good at this, so I'll have to bounce some things off of you from time to time, so I can get better at this for my brother-in-Law. But anyway, we have an. An important episode today, on Germany, on German taxes. And I'm very excited to dive into this. could you just give us a quick rundown of some of the main differences between the German and American tax systems and, you know, how do these differences affect overall tax burden for, for people in each country?

Alex Mengden: 1:57

Yeah, so I mean, there are a number of differences in the German and US tax systems. one significant difference would be that we don't have a sales tax, but we love the evaluated tax, like most countries in Europe and the OCD. that has a 19 percent rate compared to, I think, a 7. 4 percent state and local average health tax rate in the US, and a much broader base. so that finances a much larger share of, government revenue over here. another thing would be that, Germany has the second highest tax burden on labor for the average single earner at, 47. 9%. that's compared to an equivalent number, in the United States of 29. 9%. So there's quite a difference. and a lot of that difference is accounted for by the larger role that social contributions pay, play here. So that would be payroll taxes that create entitlements. So yes, you might think of Medicare or Social Security. and that's the way that also unemployment insurance is financed here. or health insurance. so that makes for a much larger share of government revenue. Another difference would be the system of federalism here in Germany, where state and local governments have a much smaller, number of policy levers, in, their tax policy. that would be very different in the U S where, the states can have, their own, personal income taxes or not. There's no option of this in Germany. It's just a couple of taxes types of taxes That play a role here

Kyle Hulehan: 3:32

And so is this kind of a little bit I would try to come up with analogies for the audience to kind of picture things. And so is this kind of like, you know, in America, there are like the, cafeteria of restaurants that aren't coordinated with each other, but they got a couple options. You got you got different restaurants you can go to. So those are the different types of taxes. And then in Germany, there's like a almost a preset menu of things that you can do. It's just it's kind of a fixed options. Is that is that kind of on track? That's

Alex Mengden: 3:59

more like well you get a fixed menu, but you can choose your Your soft drink or if you want to have a vegetarian menu or not. Those are your choices,

Kyle Hulehan: 4:08

Yeah. and I think I had one question real quick here, just to, for our American audience to kind of understand a little bit, could you give the most basic, simple explanation of a VAT just because they're not going to understand it as well?

Alex Mengden: 4:20

right? So ideally a vat also taxes final consumption as a sales tax should do but vat is levied at every stage of a production process You and then you can deduct, the value of the inputs. so this, gives you, leaves a chain of receipts that gives you a more efficient, process of, collecting, the revenues. and it also prevents text permitting. for a sales text, what you would do is just to, text that final stage. and ideally, if you text the final stage, only with a sales text and you text all of the final stage, that should be equivalent to a VAT. but in practice, that collection mechanism, leads to some discrepancies. So in countries that have a VAT, they usually raise a much larger amount of their government revenue with a VAT than countries with sales tax do with their sales taxes.

Kyle Hulehan: 5:18

Okay. Gotcha. No, that, that makes sense to me. And I am, we're going to switch gears here a little bit, back to Germany's corporate tax system. So what are the, what are the key parts of. Germany's corporate tax system. And how do you know, the, the federal and local corporate taxes there? How does, how does it work there? What's that interaction like?

Alex Mengden: 5:39

Right. So the corporate tax burden in Germany, the statutory combined corporate, income tax rate would be around 30%. and it's, I'm saying around 30 percent because it matters a bit where you're located. so there's a 15 percent federal corporate income tax rate. plus a 5. 5%, solidarity, surtax. So that makes 15. 825 percent federal uniform, a corporate income tax rate. the rest, nearly half of the corporate tax burden depends on your municipality, your local government. they can charge their own rate of corporate income tax, on you. and there, bunch of, local discrepancies. Depends where you are,

Kyle Hulehan: 6:25

Yeah. So, so in Germany's municipalities can set certain tax rates, which is obviously a little bit different from how things can work here in the U S sometimes. Can you explain how this system works and its implications for businesses and residents as well?

Alex Mengden: 6:41

right? so there are a couple of levers that the states and local governments, have in terms of tax policy. so the states can, levy a tax on real estate transfers, and they can design the base of their property taxes. Those are the two main things, and local governments. they can set the property tax rates, that's a typical local tax in many countries as also in the US, right? they can set some excise taxes, but I think there's, the like, like a dock tax, or a tax on hotel beds. But the thing that really stands out in Germany is the local trade tax or local business, tax. so that's the rate of, corporate income tax that you're charged in a specific, jurisdiction of your local government, level. so that can mean, for, an order of size that can mean, a municipality as large as a city state of Hamburg or Berlin, Berlin with more than three, million inhabitants. It can also mean municipalities with fewer than 100 residents. So there's a large variation in the sizes of those jurisdictions and that plays a role in how that tax works out. Some municipalities can freely set their rates subject to a minimum rate of 7%. and there are in fact, some that charge the minimum rate. but there's a, high, bandwidth. with rates ranging from, seven to 24. 75 percent on average, it's 12. 89%. The population weighted average is a little bit higher because larger cities can, levy higher rates. So if you're in a large city, probably because you want to cluster, next to other firms in your industry. You're not as mobile and the city can levy a higher rate on you. generally there are some benefits to local tax competition. So businesses and residents can pick more attractive combinations of the tax rates they pay and the public services funded by them. you might get, faster bureaucratic procedures, faster permitting if those are well funded, but the, degree to which is beneficial depends, clearly on how much, authority, the local governments have over those, relevant factors, and some of them might be at the local level, but others, are just determined by your state government Like education or others at the federal level. So

Kyle Hulehan: 9:07

So, what I'm thinking here is this is a pretty big divergence from how things are done in the U. S., and this is actually very interesting, I mean, so if I'm understanding this correctly, like, where my brother in law and sister live in Germany, Gengecken is a town of like 300 people, so they can charge a corporate tax rate, is that

Alex Mengden: 9:26

yeah, they can charge their own corporate tax rates we have our Trade tax rate up there. I don't know after the show perhaps you can find their little town around Stuttgart Check their own tax rates But yeah, even if your municipality has fewer than 100 residents, they can set their own rate

Kyle Hulehan: 9:46

Yeah, and, even to clarify for our U. S. audience, like just think about the town that you're living in, you know, I'm from Roebling, New Jersey, like Roebling, New Jersey is not, you know, setting us taxes. This is a big divergence from how we do things at the state level. Local taxes are usually property taxes or things like that. it's not usually done like this. But so I have a question, practically speaking, you know, do you, You Businesses move around a lot or are they trying to like hop around to find the cheapest tax rate or are they wary of moving anywhere because they can't count on the tax rate being stable?

Alex Mengden: 10:20

Businesses do, tend to have, uh, their, place their operations there, in, municipalities with lower tax rates. And you see that especially around some larger cities, that have adjacent municipalities with lower tax rates. And that's where sometimes, industry, tends to cluster a bit more because you still have that metro area access, but the low tax rates. But it turns out there's a bit of a problem of scale, because those local governments can get very small and economic activity can be concentrated. you get into strategic interaction problems that you usually wouldn't have, if you levy corporate taxes at a national level. so there's been some research on, immobile investments. So an investment that you cannot take away moving in once. So that would be a power plant, for instance. and the commitment problem there is the, that the municipalities cannot commit to low rates and keeping those late low rates once, businesses have made an investment. That's a mobile. So once you put your power plant here in our municipality, we have the power plant. You can't take it away. Okay. and we might as well increase the rate. the problem is that businesses anticipate that, and they're hesitant, to invest, they know the rate is going to be raised up, afterwards. So you're going to have an deterrent on investment from that anticipated future rate, even though that future rate does not raise any revenue. So that's, that's a problem. definitely one problem in practice. another problem would be with revenue instability. if your small, jurisdiction and your, economic activity is, distributed across just a couple of corporate taxpayers, then that revenue can be a very unstable based on how much that business earns in a given year, how much it invests. so this can be easy to imagine for those really small municipalities, but even for, mid sized cities. So the one prominent example would be the city of Mainz, 220, 000 residents, and placed to, uh, BioNTech, the pharmaceutical company that, produced the Pfizer vaccine. so during the pandemic. The city of Mainz had a great, revenue, windfall, that they were happy to spend. recently people, weren't, buying as many vaccines anymore, so there, they made, losses, and, well, now that, source of revenue, is closed. And that motivates some restrictions on how, companies can, carry back and forward their losses from one year to another.

Kyle Hulehan: 12:53

That definitely creates some complication there. I'm wondering if. You know, from your perspective, and I, and I know taxes are very nuanced in the behavior and how people react are nuanced. Do you think a unified rate would be more beneficial in, in Germany? Or do you, do you have some opinions on this or do you think the system is working okay?

Alex Mengden: 13:12

I went into this with a sympathetic attitude towards local tax competition, cause of that general model, I had in my head. Yes. This allows you to pick, better combinations of your rates and the level of, funding for public services. But then I'm coming out of this with more skepticism. And I think in the end, if, that authority, went either to the, federal states, there are 16 of them, or it was a federal unified rate, that would be better because that would not cause these commitment problems. and if your local tax competition leads you to you, deteriorating the corporate tax base. that just makes the, the, the corporate tax, less efficient, overall.

Kyle Hulehan: 13:56

No, I was just going to say, it just becomes a lot more complicated. Like that, that's how I'm seeing it. It creates a lot of complication and confusion on what exactly is going to happen. And when businesses can't predict their future properly, they are tend not to want to invest. And then like you're saying, maybe the base strengths, or maybe they want to expand somewhere else, or there would be a good place to go. But then they're like, they're going to jack up the rate if we move there. And so it just becomes a pretty like. Challenging process. It sounds like

Alex Mengden: 14:20

yeah, exactly. And those, restrictions on lost carryovers, I think they're a problem. ideally, businesses should be taxed on their average income over time. Um, if you don't do that, then businesses with much more volatile income streams, where you have to invest for a while, and you make losses for a while, and only after that, you, get your, revenues. Those are disadvantaged. We don't want that. and there are some tax reforms aiming at, extending, carry over provisions. to prevent exactly that from happening, that if you do R and D for, 10, 15 years, you can reap the rewards just as much as a company that gets, the, rewards and the cost at the same time. and in Germany's latest, tax reform, the growth and opportunity law, there were discussions about that. There were some extensions to the, the share of, losses that you can, carry forward in time. but extensions, they exclude the local trade tax. You can only use them against the federal unified rate.

Kyle Hulehan: 15:23

So that it's not as generous It's kind of the kind of the saying yeah, and I think that that makes sense You want to smooth those out over time, you know you you because some businesses are volatile They make a lot of money one year don't make as much another year kind of like you were talking about in in minds like You know, they were making all the money and now now it's not and And so you want to be able to smooth those things out over time. but we're going to, we're going to switch gears just a little bit here from, from the corporate side to some of the property tax issues that you're experiencing in Germany. What, what are the main issues for property owners in Germany?

Alex Mengden: 15:56

So there's a state and the local angle to this. From the local authorities, your local government can set only the property tax rate, one for agricultural properties and the other for, for any other properties. your states have two, policy levels now, that would be the real estate transfer tax, and, that would be the, real estate tax rate. transfer tax rate, and the property tax base. so the way our recurrent property taxes work in Germany for a long time was that your tax liability was determined by your federally determined base, times the estimated property value. And then, that times the municipal, assessment rate. so I think that's very similar to the U S. or then perhaps the, that perhaps the states, design the, base, right?

Kyle Hulehan: 16:46

Yeah.

Alex Mengden: 16:47

yeah. so that system was declared unconstitutional a couple of years back. and the reason for that was that the property values had not been updated for more than half a century now. so in the, the former Western states, the latest update to the, property tax, values, was 1965 for the, and for the new States, in the East, it was 1935. so people thought that was unjust and you cannot say this is the value of my property. when things have changed a little over the last couple of decades, so from 2025 on, since, the, property tax values had to be, changed anyways. the process of determining the base was devolved to the states, and now states can design their own property tax basis. so, most taxpayers, that have been vocal about it have not been very happy about it because it comes with some transition costs. there's some uncertainty about what your new, property value is going to be determined as, and you, you might have to adjust to a new, property tax base and you have to measure, well, what's actually the floor area as determined by this law, what am I taxable on, but some states have used their, uh, new powers, to improve their, property tax bases. So, there's still a lot of states that follow the federal model. but I think two states particularly stick out, Bavaria and Baden Württemberg. so what Bavaria prioritized, was, designing a simple and predictable system where you don't, have, many of these transition costs. So that's basically a flat rate per square, meter of total floor area. so, and the rate, is determined by municipality. but it's pretty easy to calculate your tax liability once you've measured your property, and you know, ahead of time what you're paying. that's one approach. I think another interesting approach, is in Van Wittenberg, another southern, state in Germany, van Wittenberg implemented a land value tax. so the approach there is. that your property is taxed only based on the value of land and not the value of the buildings and structures and that comes with a few, benefits for for investment into buildings and structures because you have much more control over the value of your building because you make your own investments into that than the value of your land Because largely the value of your land is determined by what is around you, what's in this location. if you're in the middle of a booming metropolis, the value of your land is, is relatively high relative to, a less dense area perhaps. the problem that, property taxes reduce your investment in buildings and structures does not occur as much, under land value tax. Because the way your land value is estimated is by the value of surrounding properties trying to abstract from the buildings, on top of that. so there's a small caveat. there's a very active online community. this land value tax has a very active fan base, who might tend to be a bit over optimistic, on the tax. So it's, probably valuable to find out. This is not free money. and, there are still economic losses to, implementing, property taxes like that. So you can imagine the one way that your investment determines your land value is, by spillover effects to the surrounding properties, right? So if you say you build a large factory in a, in a small town, then this attracts suppliers, this attracts new workers, perhaps, perhaps, you know, new students to the technical university who want to work at your plant or the other suppliers and that shoots up the land values and eventually your tax bill. So for these sort of larger ventures that makes a difference. and one shouldn't be too overoptimistic on the tax, even though it's good policy. it's more friendly to, towards investment than traditional property taxes.

Kyle Hulehan: 20:40

What is funny is you see when you're in the tax world, like we are, you see these little, these little niches pop up online. and, and they really, they, they just like adore certain tax and they root for a certain tax. And it's not that it's these taxes can be good or bad, but it is funny to see this, like these little taxes become very popular and then you're like, And, and they just, and it's not, and it's not because it's good or bad, but they just, they just catch on. And it's a very like, I don't know. it's like very, it's like hipster taxes or something like it's very, it's like, these are the taxes that the cool kids like, and, and it, but I mean, I think it's a, it's a pretty good, it's a worthy idea. I think it, it makes sense and does keep things consistent, but it is, it is funny when you're really in this, you do see this stuff pop up a lot. but yeah, so. To kind of get back to the point here after my little tangent, how does the, the real estate transaction tax in Germany, you know, what does it affect, you know, in terms of property investment and, and mobility?

Alex Mengden: 21:35

Yeah, so I think to the history of it or how it works in general, there was a similar, uh, evolution, in, terms of, federalism, where up until September 2006, this was a federal thing. There was a unified federal rate of 3. 5 percent, on the property uh, sales value. every time a property exchanges ownership. So if you sell your house, you have to pay 3. 5 percent on the gross value with no deduction for any, any investments you made. and from late 2006 on the States could set their own rates. and since then we've seen, rates go up by quite a bit. So the average rate. Is now 5. 53 percent in 2024. and right now only Bavaria, still maintains that low 3. 5 percent rate today. and perhaps to come back to the ideal of a, property transfer tax. I think it can be justified in terms of acting as a fee for. All the costs, that, come with exchanging properties. So deed registrations, and maintaining ownership records, But in Germany, those are already covered, to some extent by other mandatory fees, for the, registration, specifically. and then the question is, what is this tax really for? because this is a tax on gross sales value. And we know that if you don't give people deductions for the investments they make, to their property, this is very harmful to investments. And. It's also harmful to, to real estate transactions. so it prevents businesses from purchasing real estate and to put it to a better use. Oftentimes for that to happen, you have to exchange ownership. the same person who has a business that may not have done well, might not be the right person to run the most successful business in the same location. You have to sell it. and it also reduces, people's ability to move for better jobs. so, or, for other, purposes that they, might wanna move, for, you have to change your home. Germany, has a high share of renters. perhaps also people also attribute to those, high transaction costs. but for the people who don't rent, but they own their property, if you have to pay. 5. 5 percent on your property value for moving for higher pay. you think about it twice. So that's a problem. I think the third problem would be that it discourages, capital investment in buildings. so to put that into numbers, there's one study, that looks at the effect of, those, transfer tax hikes, on transactions. and comes to the conclusion that, if we assume absence, the absence of tax planning, then, you get an economic loss of 67 cents, on an additional euro of revenue. That's a pretty high number, substantial cost. that's moderated by the assumption that, okay, perhaps you're only shifting some of those transactions in time and they still occur. despite the higher, higher tax., but yeah, it's, 67, cents that that are lost to the whole economy, due to raising one year of revenue. That's pretty substantial. and I think on top of that, those taxes tend to capitalize in the value of buildings. and subsequently, people build less. So if you know that you, build a new building, that's going to change hands a couple of times in, it's a durable life. that reduces the value that reduces the value that you're going to put into building and going through permission processes. and, for the states that, did raise their rates from 3. 5 to 5. 5, to, and 6. 5 percent respectively. so relative to, states with, very similar, uh, trends in construction, the volume of housing construction, reduced by more, than the increase in additional revenues, from that, higher tax rate. So as a direct comparison, if all the added revenue from that higher tax rate was spent early on housing, those states would still end up with a lower housing stock. So that's,

Kyle Hulehan: 25:44

Wow.

Alex Mengden: 25:45

yeah,

Kyle Hulehan: 25:45

Very. So

Alex Mengden: 25:46

that's, that was pretty impressive to me. and, all states spent money on public housing. also all states except for Bavaria hiked their rates to that level. and there are probably, other lower value spending items. So you really have to think, if we're spending on these things, okay, that's not a good way to raise revenue. and, there are second order effects that we have, fewer certainty about, but I think, they're there. so to the extent that people, don't move for the better weather, but for higher paying jobs, The government is taking large Share that in taxes and social contributions So there's more revenue lost perhaps not so much to your state, but to the federal level and The pension system And also when people move to higher productivity areas, they may make other people more productive So this is a bit harder to estimate, but there are lots of spillover effects, that, go into the economy as a whole, that we would have to think about, when thinking about the real estate transfer tax.

Kyle Hulehan: 26:50

what would you see maybe as an alternative to this?

Alex Mengden: 26:53

Right, so I think the main alternative to, treat, property, transfers and buildings more neutrally, would be to levy a value added tax on the value of new buildings. so that value added tax has a much higher rate of 19%. So that might sound like a lot compared to 5. 5%. but you'd have to think about, that, the frequency in which that rate is levied. So that would be only once you build new buildings, and the value of those new buildings. and not every time a property exchanges hands. and another point that makes this sound, very much less scary is that under VAT, you can deduct the value of inputs from uh, taxable base. so right now, if you build a home, you pay VAT on all of the inputs. but you cannot deduct that value from your, property transfer tax base. So that would be the more neutral way to treat that in line with how we treat other consumption items And we should treat housing the same way So the there's a question why the states did raise their rates it Seems sort of odd if it's such a bad deal. perhaps, state governments at the time didn't know it was such a bad deal. but one other explanation is that, we have a fiscal transfer, system in Germany. and the way that this transfer system treats real estate transactions is that, The volume of real estate state transactions, enters positively into your assumed capability to contribute. So if you reduce your, real estate transactions volume, you pay less into the system and you get more out of it. so this is sort of a rat race that this, transfer system is setting, And the states only have so many, tax policy levers. So that this might not be the right one.

Kyle Hulehan: 28:39

Yeah. And you know what? We talk about this all the time. I mean, but there's always trade offs. There's just always, there's just always going to be a trade off. In policy situations and in taxes, like you'd want a hundred percent win, but. There just really aren't that many of them. You know, you got, you got to take marginal wins, marginal gains. I think the saying is, don't let, what is it? Don't let perfect be the enemy of good like when you can do something good and productive, it's a good thing to do. it doesn't have to be perfect or ideal, but if we can make things better, that's A good thing to do. and so as we're, we're getting to the close here, I just want to, wrap this up with like, what do you see are the biggest tax challenges and facing Germany right now? And how are they affecting, businesses and individuals?

Alex Mengden: 29:19

Yeah, so I think there are many tax challenges, but focusing on the themes that we touched on a bit, also in relation to state and local taxes, I think a really low hanging fruit is repealing the real estate transaction tax, and instead levying VAT on the value of new buildings. Just because the economic loss is so large compared to the extra revenue. and it also doesn't make up a huge chunk of revenue. so perhaps you need to give the states another tax level in exchange or some higher share of VAT or personal income tax in their jurisdiction. Thank you. That would be the low hanging fruit, the number one item I would pick, even though it might not be the most, sizable one. on the broader picture, I think, Germany can do a lot in terms of corporate tax reform. our depreciation schedules, not very investment friendly. We could, do a lot more in terms of extending, carry forward, provisions, just improving the treatment of investment, for businesses, and the local business tax is an obstacle, to this in some ways. that we've seen with the recent tax reform. so I think figuring out some way, to either give, the local business tax, to state level authorities, or, transforming, it, or consolidating it into a federally, uniform corporate rate. would be worth thinking about. and we would have to think about how we can compensate local governments with perhaps more stable, sources of revenue. but that would allow us to improve the corporate tax base.

Kyle Hulehan: 30:50

Yeah. And is there in terms of local taxes or anything, is there anything else you see there as, you know, a big challenge facing, Germany?

Alex Mengden: 30:57

So in terms of local taxes, I think, there will be some transition costs, in the next year or this year, connected to the property tax reform and the value reassessment. And, This is mostly transitory. and I think it's actually an opportunity for states to improve their property tax bases a bit. and some states we see Bavaria and also Baden Württemberg have used that opportunity, and more states could follow suit.

Kyle Hulehan: 31:24

Great. Well, Alex, thank you so much for being on the show today. This is so interesting. So fascinating. The way that I see this is, you know, it's all about the VAT. That's what I kind of came away from this today. You guys, in Europe, you love the value added tax. and I think this is like a, a really fascinating episode and you kind of can see the differences between, the U S and the EU and Germany. Is there anything else I just want to give you an opportunity? Is anything else you want to you want to hit on or plug? Anything that you're working on right now that you want our listeners to check out and be aware of

Alex Mengden: 31:54

Right. so we just released, a, local trade tax map, for all the, over 10,000 local governments in Germany. so So that gives a bit more context, about the things that we also talked about in this episode. and, you can really, see, the regional differences, and, see where your state ranks. Another thing that we are releasing in a couple of weeks will be a map of the real estate, transaction tax, rates in Germany and how they developed over time. and also a couple, more pieces about the, the context and the studies we mentioned. so I think that's worth checking out.

Kyle Hulehan: 32:31

Absolutely Thank you so much for being on the show today. This was such a fascinating episode I appreciate you being here and i'm sure we'll have you back soon

Alex Mengden: 32:38

Thanks a lot. thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

32:41

This has been another episode of the deduction to learn more about the tax foundation and the deduction. Visit us at taxfoundation. org slash podcast. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at tax foundation. If you've been enjoying our show and want to help us grow, please leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps others find the show. And if you didn't enjoy the deduction, well, keep it to yourself. Another way you can support our work is by donating to the Tax Foundation on our website. Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time.