II · 02 Politics — Finance & Budget
The chair of the tax committee
Before he was a minister, Alois Rainer spent most of a decade on the money side of the Bundestag: in the Budget Committee, as CSU budget and finance spokesperson and, from 2021 to 2025, as Chair of the Finance Committee.
Why it matters
The committee every tax law passes through
The Bundestag’s Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss) mirrors the remit of the Federal Ministry of Finance, with one exception: the budget itself belongs to the Budget Committee. Everything else lands here. That covers income, corporate and value-added tax, customs, and the regulation of banks, insurers and securities markets.
In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) the committee had 45 members: 13 from the SPD, 12 from the CDU/CSU, 7 from the Greens, 6 from the FDP, 5 from the AfD and 2 from the Left. As lead committee it examines bills in detail, invites experts to public hearings, negotiates amendments and gives the plenary a recommendation for the final vote.
What a committee chair does
A committee chair does not decide policy alone. The chair runs the meetings, sets agendas with the committee’s officers, schedules hearings, keeps proceedings fair between government and opposition and represents the committee externally. Chairs are allocated among parliamentary groups in proportion to their strength. In 2021–2025 the CDU/CSU held the Finance Committee chair while in opposition to the SPD-Green-FDP coalition.
That made the post unusual: an opposition politician presiding over the committee through which the governing coalition had to pass its tax legislation. This came in a period of energy-price relief packages, inflation compensation and the 2023 Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the federal budget.
Source: German Bundestag, Finance Committee of the 20th legislative period; constitution of the committee, 15 December 2021.
Two committees, two roles
Budget versus finance
Haushaltsausschuss · member 2013–2017
Spending: the federal budget
Decides on the budget for each ministry and approves extra spending during the year. Its members examine individual budget lines and the plans of each ministry in detail. Rainer was a full member in his first legislative term, alongside the Audit Committee, which reviews spending after the fact.
Finanzausschuss · chair 2021–2025
Revenue and regulation: tax and finance law
Leads on tax legislation, customs and financial-market regulation. Together, the two committees cover both sides of the state’s accounts, what it takes in and what it spends.
Analysis
How finance experience shows up in agricultural policy
Several of the most contested agricultural issues of 2024–2026 were fiscal questions.
- Agricultural diesel. The 2024 decision by the previous government to phase out the diesel tax refund for farms triggered nationwide farmer protests. In November 2025 the Bundestag restored the full refund of 21.48 cents per litre from 2026, costing around €430 million a year.
- The farm budget. The 2026 agricultural budget of €6.99 billion required reprioritisation. The federal programme for rebuilding livestock housing is being phased out, which critics regard as a step back for animal welfare.
- Crisis aid. After the drought-hit 2026 harvest, the ministry announced around €1 billion in liquidity assistance, a measure that must be financed and justified within tight budget limits.
These decisions involve trade-offs between relief for farms, other policy goals and fiscal discipline, the same trade-offs a Finance Committee chair works through every week. Whether they were the right choices is debated on the criticism page.
Sources: top agrar, Nov 2025; top agrar, agricultural budget 2026; BMLEH, 2 Sep 2026.