(Mountain; 11/12-03; p.3)

More interesting is the area – or the areas – in-between. So, the practised scheme allows to speak of tax-payers, earning below or above average but neither getting lowest wages nor highest incomes.

Income in Germany is mainly based – as the achieving elites never get tired of mentioning – not on interests on inheritance or lottery wins, but on abilities successfully sold at the markets.
These abilities, however, in a developed country are neither given by birth nor inherited, but achieved by use of infrastructure, the educational system, especially.
Thence, the applied principle of 'taxation on performance' is just: more duties vis-à-vis the state are obliged of the ones that profited more of him.

This reasoning is visible in the tax 'curve'. One the one hand, both, earners below and above average are taxed more for every further Euro, but the first below and the last above average. The deviation of such a curve – or in case of more sub-groups, of its respective parts – from a line is a measure of this form of just inequality.

Supporters of tax stages give up this principle and its effects in part.
The scheme of F Merz e.g. does have higher stages for higher incomes; an income of 20000 Euro in this way should not be taxed for the first 8000 Euro, the next 8000 Euro should be taxed by twelve per cent and the rest of 4000 Euro should be taxed by twenty-four per cent. Within one stage, however, the same tax-rate is applied; for the given example, the same tax-rate of twenty-four per cent is applied to income areas of 16000 Euro to 17000 Euro and of 16000 Euro to 20000 Euro.
– So, a relevant simplification of tax calculation is reached, not only for the individual tax-payer but also e.g. for trade unionists and organised employers that have to count in these effects in their negotiations.
(read on here)