Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is pushing for an end to a regulation that lowers the tax burden on married couples.
As Wiebke Esdar, deputy chair of the SPD in the German parliament, told newspaper Handelsblatt yesterday, the party is demanding an end to the so-called Ehegattensplitting or spousal split.
This rule – which was introduced in 1958 – allows spouses to add their individual incomes and then pay taxes as if each spouse had earned exactly half of the total. Due to the steep tax progression this translates to tax savings of up to €20,000 per year.
The regulation makes it easier for couples to have one spouse take care of the children while the other acts as the main earner for the family.
Esdar said the regulation favoured “single-earner marriages” and created “negative incentives for women to work”, as a lower income for one spouse meant bigger tax savings for their higher-earning partner.
“The state is thus promoting a completely outdated role model and gender inequality, which makes many women dependent. Against this background, we see a fundamental need for reform in this area,” he said.
While the abolition of the spousal split has been on the SPD’s agenda for a while, the new push comes amid an intensifying debate within the CDU-SPD coalition government on how to finance the country’s burgeoning deficit.
Currently, the administration of Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is looking at a shortfall of €170 billion up to 2029. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) started pushing for tax hikes in August 2025.
An end to tax benefits for married couples, though, would only have a gradual positive effect on public finances. Due to constitutional constraints, the abolition could only apply to new marriages, not to already married couples.
In the past, the German Federal Constitutional Court has found that the spousal split was not a “tax benefit” for married couples but part of appropriate taxation based on a couple’s economic capacity and an element of the constitutionally mandated special protection of matrimony and family.
In its election programme ahead of the 2025 general election, the CDU had still promised to keep the spousal split.
They have now gone agains that and other election promises, such as the abolition of the electricity tax for German households.
