Avoid placing additional costs on SMEs while strengthening dual vocational training and attracting international labour. Entrepreneurship needs favourable frameworks to thrive.

The backlog in the maintenance of roads, railways, and waterways is impairing companies' competitiveness. The fragility of the system became painfully evident during the scorching summer. While the initial effects of the special fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality are becoming visible, they remain insufficient. The special fund’s resources should be consistently deployed for additional investments.

What is required is long-term secured financing, the rapid modernisation of transport routes, the expansion of intermodal hubs connecting roads, railways, and waterways, as well as accelerated planning, approval, and implementation processes. Businesses are increasingly concerned about the dramatically worsened financial situation of municipalities. Sustainable solutions are needed to ensure the long-term viability of the infrastructures vital to medium-sized enterprises in towns, cities, and districts.

High energy costs are significantly hampering growth in Germany. For almost half of the companies and businesses, the already historically high energy costs have continued to rise; two-thirds must cope with higher heating costs. The consequence: Around one-third of companies are postponing investments, and roughly one in five is considering relocating activities abroad.

The associations are calling for the rapid reduction of electricity tax for all companies and businesses to the European minimum level and an effective limitation of state-induced energy costs. Furthermore, grid connections should be accelerated, procedures standardized, and companies protected from unilateral CO₂ cost burdens in international competition. Free allocation of certificates should remain until the necessary infrastructure for decarbonization is available.

The SME Working Group appreciates the Federal Government's efforts in reducing bureaucracy and explicitly acknowledges the planned Reporting Relief Act. However, despite initial progress, the annual bureaucracy costs of 65.3 billion euros remain far too high.

The tax burden on German companies and enterprises remains too high in an international comparison. A fundamental corporate tax reform with a maximum overall burden of 25 percent at the company level is overdue. Significant relief for medium-sized partnerships is also necessary. The vast majority of medium-sized enterprises are partnerships, whose central corporate tax is income tax. Therefore, the increase in the top tax rate often impacts the equity base of regional small and medium-sized enterprises.

Urgent improvements in the advantage for retained profits are needed. Neutrality regarding the legal form should be maintained. The increase in the top tax rate and the lack of relief in income tax affect freelancers, law firms, medical practices, gastronomy, and retailers. The goal must be to strengthen the necessary equity capital formation in companies and enterprises and not to restrict it through excessive tax burdens. Furthermore, there should be a regular automatic adjustment of the benchmarks for the income tax rate to inflation ("bracket creep").