Germany keeps inventing taxes and almost never kills one off, according to this column. Politicians show striking creativity when new levies come up for discussion, with everything from sugar duties to artificial intelligence floated as possible revenue. Cutting taxes runs in the opposite direction, where enthusiasm quickly evaporates. The column rejects the notion that this one-way street is a natural condition of German fiscal life. New taxes tend to arrive dressed as narrow, temporary measures and then quietly settle in for good. The piece's real complaint is the imbalance: a system that knows only how to grow its tax take, never how to shrink it.