Tax-Free Work

Remember, I write for non-residents and Americans....not for Germans who might already know the system.

Germany is this oddball country that requires a deposit on each bottle (glass or plastic or aluminum) that goes with water, beer, or sodas.  Orange juice and wine are exempt from the deal.

It means that when you walk in and buy a six-pack of Pepsi....there's a 1.50 Euro deposit that you put down.  When you bring the cans back....to any location that sells drinks....you get the 1.50 Euro back.  All of this was done roughly a decade ago.....to clear up litter.

From my humble opinion, having seen the before and after affects.....ninety-percent of the litter issue has come to an end.    Oddly, you will notice people on the low-side of life....walking around urban areas or sports arenas....picking up discarded beer or drink containers and returning them for the 25-Euro cent deposit.  In some cases, an aggressive guy might be able to pick up forty Euro a week.

This week.....there's been some negative news over this deposit gimmick.  You see.....when you buy a bottle from a retailer....there is no VAT involved in the payment part of the scheme.  But in wholesale operations.....the VAT is calculated on the deposit at 30 cents (NOT 25 cents).  This is a legal situation, written by the lawmakers.....into the system.

If you were to buy a bottle at retail operations and return it to a wholesale operation......you make five cents profit.

Well.....someone has realized the hole in the law and created a business operation which goes around to pubs, bars, and cafes.....to pay them directly for the cases of drinks (25 cents of course), and they make the run out to the wholesale operation with a mass return.

How much is involved?  I'm not sure with the accuracy, but there's talk of almost possibly forty-million Euro being siphoned off to this group which figured out the gimmick.

Illegal?  No.

Course, you can imagine this bread-truck type of operation.....some guy working the customers all day and he's got 2,000 cans and bottles on the truck.....twelve hours of work of stop-and-go work, and he unloads everything (probably taking a minimum of 75 minutes) to earn 500 Euro (in one day).  The cherry on this deal?  There's no paperwork......so in effect, there's no way to figure taxation on this guy, and he's making this 500 Euro tax-free.

Do the math....but if he only works four days a week.....he's making 2,000 Euro a week for sixty-odd hours of tough but profitable work.  The guy could even clear 100,000 Euro a year, if he were aggressive and had the pubs, clubs and cafes lined up.

Government upset?  Shocked would be the better term to use.  They didn't think anyone would ever make a profit off this.  Fixing the problem?  It's not clear that they even want to to fix it.

It's kinda amusing in some ways.  It's not a money-making scheme that makes much sense, and it's a fairly physical way of earning money.  The odd thing?  Tax free work.