German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addresses delegates at the Bundestag about a budget crisis on November 28, 2023 in Berlin. Photograph by Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images Eventually the sighs from the next table grow too loud to ignore and, breaking a Berlin social taboo, I speak to a stranger in a cafe. Felix, the sigher, insists he is fine, while pointing down at three A4 pages of barely legible print before him: his property tax statement from the local tax authority, the Finanzamt. “I don’t know what the Finanzamt want from me now,” he moans, right knee bobbing up and...