Anyone wishing to raise funds for their cause, receive public funding or make use of affordable council premises these days generally needs one thing: the non-profit status. Around 500,000 organisations in Germany hold this status – and that is precisely why it is also a popular target for intimidation. However, when tax authorities revoke an organisation’s non-profit status or threaten to do so, it undermines their very basis for existence.
This new publication traces the origins of this instrument – and shows that the fundamental principles of the law on non-profit organisations predate the Basic Law. Fiona von Bose and Dr Marie Wachinger from the alliance ‘Rechtssicherheit für politische Willensbildung’ e.V. trace its history from the Weimar Reich Tax Code of 1919 to the present day.
The journey takes us through dark chapters: in 1934, the central, hitherto undefined concept of the ‘general public’ was redefined by law as the ‘German national community’ – a loophole which the Reich Finance Court exploited in 1936 to retroactively revoke the charitable status of Jewish organisations, thereby destroying them economically. The authors demonstrate how this ruling became the blueprint for the systematic dismantling of Jewish welfare structures – a process whose full extent has still not been fully investigated to this day.
Although the Nazi interpretative provision was repealed after 1945, the actual Public Benefit Organisation Ordinance was carried over almost word for word into the newly founded Federal Republic – and from there, in 1977, into the current Tax Code. The key provisions from the 1920s and 1930s remain there to this day, virtually unchanged.
The text illustrates what this means in practice using Attac as an example: in 2019, the Federal Fiscal Court revoked the organisation’s non-profit status on the grounds that it was engaged in political advocacy – a ruling that continues to have an impact to this day and for which the constitutional appeal remains pending. To this day, the list of charitable purposes set out in the German Fiscal Code does not recognise human rights, social justice or peace as charitable purposes.
The authors draw a clear conclusion from this: the law governing non-profit organisations has never been merely a matter of tax policy, but has always also been a question of regulatory policy – who is allowed to campaign for what, and how critical may that campaign be? A reform has been promised in every coalition agreement since 1998, but no substantial changes have ever been made.
The full text is available to download free of charge.