Comment: Wildberger wants to tax AI - ChatGPT of all places shows why that doesn't work

The digital minister wants to restructure the labor market with a levy on AI sales. He is not alone: ​​the coalition is looking for new revenue, and the list of its ideas is getting longer.

Digitization Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) would have been better off asking the AI ​​in advance. At the beginning of the week, he told the “Tagesspiegel” “we have to tax” the “extremely high sales” of artificial intelligence. The federal government could then use the money collected to restructure the labor market.

In fact, the sums are enormous. For 2026, the digital association Bitkom expects AI spending of 28.7 billion euros in Germany alone, for software, services and hardware. Only: Wildberger can find out how nonsensical his initiative is with a simple query on ChatGPT. “Expenses are not sales,” the AI ​​chatbot instructs.

Now the expenses of one are always the sales of the other. But the former top manager of Mediamarkt and Saturn may have noticed from time to time that suppliers of computer programs and electronics are usually by no means exempt from the control of the tax authorities.

A government-orchestrated labor market overhaul funded by taxes on savings that AI has led to? Sounds absurd – and it is.