Leftists disagree: 13. AHV pension: how should it be financed?

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Leftists and trade unionists want March 3. Because at the moment the opinion polls for the vote on a 13th AHV pension predict a confident victory for them. However, the activists fear that the opponents will make up ground in the coming weeks.

Especially since one question is still unresolved: who should finance a 13th AHV? Because the initiative text does not provide any guidelines for this.

Nowadays the AHV brings in more than it spends. The treasuries are well filled with about 50 billion francs. These reserves are being tapped with the introduction of the 13th AHV pension. Therefore, the AHV would need 4.1 billion francs annually from the introduction of the 13th pension in 2026 and around 5 billion francs more from 2030, because at the same time the number of pensioners is also increasing.

SP-Badran agreed with FDP-Sauter

So it is clear to citizens: “The project is simply not financeable,” said FDP state councilor Regine Sauter (57) during the debate in the council during the winter session of 2022.

Even SP state councilor Jacqueline Badran (62) agreed with Sauter at the time that it would be difficult to finance: “They say it is not possible to increase wage rates; The economy could not support that – you are right,” entrepreneur Badran said to her liberal colleague in the city council.

Who should pay for it?

Badran’s statement at the time was surprising: it was the unions close to her and the initiative committee that considered an increase in the wage contributions of employers and employees by 0.4 percent of wages each.

However, this solution also hurts the left: because it means that employees also have less in their wallets.

The weekly magazine “WOZ” has calculated that with a gross salary of 4,000 francs, the deduction for employees would amount to 228 francs instead of 212 francs. This means that 16 francs less would end up in the account every month. With a wage of 6,000 francs, that would be 24 francs less.

But there are also other ideas about how the pension supplement could be financed.

Badran is currently pushing for a different proposal: she wants to abolish the second pillar and transfer one percent of it to the AHV. “If we take a wage percentage from the second pillar, we hardly notice anything. But if we move this percentage to the first pillar, we will use it to finance a 13th AHV pension,” she told Blick. With another percent you can even finance a 14th AHV pension.

A VAT increase of one percentage point would also be possible. However, that would nullify the effect of the supplementary pension. “High costs would be imposed on people who were already suffering from rising health insurance premiums, rents and energy costs,” criticized SVP national councilor Thomas Aeschi (45).

Increasing the federal contribution would also be an option. Nowadays this accounts for one fifth of the AHV budget every year. In 2022 that was 9.7 billion francs. In addition, 3.2 billion francs comes from VAT revenue and 260 million francs from the casino levy.

Centrist politician Beat Rieder (60) has a different idea: he asked the Federal Council in a proposal to investigate whether the AHV could be secured for a longer period of time with a mini tax on stock market transactions. The Council of States proposes that 0.1 percent of the trade value be levied on every transaction on the financial markets. This would allow the federal government to generate billions in revenue.

Juso’s ‘Initiative for a Future’ calls for an inheritance tax of 50 percent on an exemption amount of fifty million. According to their calculations, this would bring about six billion francs into the public treasury annually.

This makes it clear: the biggest weakness of the initiative is that it is still completely unclear how the supplementary pension could be financed. The country’s politicians have numerous ideas about how the financing could be achieved, but families and single parents in particular would face significant additional financial burdens depending on the outcome of the discussion. Something that the initiative committee for the trade union federation certainly did not have in mind.

Source:Blick