Embattled German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Monday unveiled his latest plan to win back disaffected voters by announcing an extra 3 percent tax on the rich.
In the first of a series of manifesto commitments before September's election, Schroeder said that he would impose the tax on anyone earning 250,000 euros (US$303,766) a year -- or 500,000 euros if they were married.
Germany's top rate of tax would go up from 42 percent to 45 percent, Schroeder said, adding that the extra revenue raised would be spent on research and development.
"I think people who earn very very much more than the average are patriots enough to recognize that they have to do their bit," he added.
The manifesto pledge came as Schroeder announced that he would be holding a vote of confidence in Germany's parliament on Friday.
His ruling Social Democrat-Green coalition is expected to lose the vote deliberately, so that Germany's president, Horst Kohler, can dissolve parliament under Germany's constitution and endorse Schroeder's plans for an early election.
With the poll expected on September 18, Schroeder appears to be shifting his party decisively to the left in an attempt to head off a growing challenge from a new left-wing alliance.
Earlier this month Oskar Lafontaine, a former Social Democratic party (SPD) leader, and a bitter critic of Schroeder, announced that he was resigning from the party to stand as a candidate for the new "Links Bundnis."
The alliance is made up of disaffected Social Democrat left-wingers and former communists, who still enjoy strong support in eastern Germany.
Yesterday, Germany's conservative opposition derided Schroeder's new tax plan, though it has so far not revealed its own proposals.
"It's nonsense, to the power of 10," Dirk Niebel, the general secretary of the opposition FDP Liberal party said. "It's nothing more than pure electoral populism."
Other observers were also unimpressed, pointing out that Schroeder had only just lowered taxes for top-earners, at the beginning of the year, as part of his attempt to revive Germany's sluggish economy.
"It's symbolic politics. It doesn't make any economic sense," Bert Rurup, one of the government's economic advisers, told the newspaper Die Welt yesterday.
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