And now Ben Hammou faces another blow as the German government moves to end pandemic-era tax breaks for the hospitality industry. The fiscally hawkish FDP party, which has control of the finance ministry in the three-way ruling coalition, backs letting the tax break expire, calculating that it would cost 3.3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) to keep it going in 2024. Many restaurants operate on tight margins, which makes them quite sensitive to tax increases. In Spain, Italy and France, the VAT on restaurants is at 10%, considerably lower than the expected 19% in Germany from 2024. The question is whether German restaurants are still struggling or have recovered well enough from the pandemic to withstand having the tax break removed, according to Tomas Dvorak, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

---

Persons: Omar Ben Hammou, Ben Hammou, Christian Lindner, Guido Zoellick, Thijs Geijer, Ingrid Hartges, DEHOGA, Steffen Marx, Tomas Dvorak, Maria Martinez, Christian Kraemer, Tanja Daube, Ulrike Heil, Belen Carreno, Giselda Vagnoni, Thomas Leigh, Matthias Williams, Hugh Lawson Organizations: Restaurant Association, ING, Reuters, Oxford Economics, Thomson Locations: Bavaria, BERLIN, Berlin, Russia, Ukraine, COVID, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Munich, Madrid, Rome, Paris