Constitutional Court rejects submission on solidarity surcharge

The Federal Constitutional Court has not accepted for decision the submission of a tax court to review the constitutionality of the solidarity surcharge.

The Federal Constitutional Court has rejected a referral from the Lower Saxony Fiscal Court as inadmissible. In the referral, the tax court had challenged the solidarity surcharge as unconstitutional, but in the opinion of the Constitutional Court did not examine its unconstitutionality carefully enough. The order for reference concerned the solidarity surcharge for 2007, and it cannot be ruled out that the Federal Constitutional Court now considers the issue of the solidarity surcharge to have been sufficiently dealt with under constitutional law, at least as far as the past is concerned. The constitutional assessment of the solidarity surcharge will therefore not change for the time being.