The plastic tax announced for 2025 will not arrive for the moment. This is reported by the newspaper Bild am Sonntag referring to government circles. Therefore, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) informed his cabinet colleagues that the law would not be ready in time. According to information from the newspaper, there are problems with data collection and there is a risk of excessive bureaucracy.
There is currently no tax on plastic: Germany transfers the tax from the state treasury
The Finance Ministry was unable to come up with a practical model for who should pay what and how much. The goal now is to continue looking for a regulation that works so that the plastic tax arrives from 2026.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper: “The specific implementation is currently being coordinated between the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Finance.”
Background: The EU introduced a plastic tax in 2021: 80 cents per kilo of plastic packaging waste. So far, the finance minister has transferred the owed sum (1.4 billion euros per year) from the state treasury to Brussels, and will probably have to do so again in 2025.