In Mainz, Germany, there is one more reason to celebrate Christmas. The ancient Roman stronghold on the banks of the Rhine, until yesterday a poor relative of nearby Frankfurt, will benefit this year from a fiscal windfall of one billion euros, largely thanks to BioNTech, the pharmaceutical laboratory founded in the city in 2008 and which has developed one of the most used vaccines in the world against Covid-19.
To date, more than 2 billion doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine have been delivered worldwide and it is estimated that the German laboratory alone will make a net profit of over 10 billion euros in 2021. Until the end of September, the company, which has offices in the United States and other German cities, has paid more than 3 billion euros in taxes, but local German authorities can impose corporate taxes.
It is unclear how much of Mainz’s tax revenues depend on the pharmaceutical company, but according to the Financial Times the laboratory “weighs” for the overwhelming majority in the coffers of the Treasury, whose revenues have gone from 173 million euros in 2020 to over 1 billion in 2021.
Local authorities have promised to use the gains to pay off the debt; therefore, crazy expenses are banned, such as those of Sindelfingen, the city of Baden-Wurttemberg that hosts the Mercedes-Benz factories, which has installed marble pedestrian crossings.