German digital minister Wildberger calls for tax on AI revenue to fund labor shift
"We must tax the extremely high revenue from this technology," the conservative minister said. The money would pay for retraining, for example in skilled trades and care work.
Archive image · Photo: Leonhard Lenz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
German Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger of the Christian Democrats has called for a tax on artificial intelligence revenue generated in Germany. "We must tax the extremely high revenue from this technology," he told the Tagesspiegel newspaper. "If growth and value creation happen here, taxes must also be paid here."
Wildberger wants the proceeds to fund a restructuring of the labor market. He expects AI to fundamentally change work, creating more jobs in the long run but in different occupations. Retraining and new roles, for example in skilled trades or care, would have to be funded, which requires growth and openness to other instruments, he said.
According to dpa-AFX, the minister gave no details on the size of the tax or when it could be introduced. Similar ideas have circulated for years: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called for taxing robots and AI to reduce the incentive to replace people with machines.