German minister rejects calls to tax growing oil profits

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s finance minister has rejected calls by some in the country’s governing parties to tax what they call “excessive profits” earned by oil companies since Russia’s war in Ukraine spiked energy prices. Suggestions for such a tax by some politicians in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens have laid bare ideological differences between those two center-left parties and Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s pro-business Free Democrats. Lindner argued Tuesday that a tax on energy company profits would only do harm and likely risk fueling inflation that is already running at a nearly half-century high of 7.9%. Spain and Italy already have approved similar taxes, while the United Kingdom has announced plans for one.