Repentant tax evaders can no longer hope for unlimited mercy if they clear the air with their tax office. This is what the Federal Finance Minister wants Lars Klingbeil (SPD) Put an end to the generally exemption from punishment of voluntary disclosure. “The existing impunity led to false incentives,” says the Federal Ministry of Finance. It encourages people to evade taxes and only declare this in the voluntary disclosure before the feared discovery. “We want to eliminate this disincentive.” Therefore, a change in the law will be proposed, according to which voluntary disclosure above certain thresholds will in future only have a mitigating effect on punishment, but no longer exempt from punishment.
“I think this is symbolic politics,” said the former President of the Federal Finance Court, Rudolf Mellinghoff, to the FAZ. Even today, the highest demands are being placed on a Self-disclosure so that it can have a dispensing effect. The authorities are unlikely to have already been on the trail of the person concerned, and everything must be discovered completely and without errors retroactively – up to ten years.
In the case of Uli Hoeneß, as is well known, this went terribly wrong. His voluntary disclosure was considered hasty and incomplete. The former president of Bayern Munich had to stand trial and was sentenced to three years and six months in prison.
The tax authorities don’t look closely everywhere
For Mellinghof, Klingbeil’s actions defy legal assessment. “You can do it that way, it’s a political question.” But for him it is not free from double standards. Illegal work is widespread in private households – when employing household helpers or craftsmen. There are hardly any controls there, nobody wants to look that closely, nobody wants to touch it. Mellinghoff called on the SPD politician and the entire government to finally tackle the really important things. “We need a well-thought-out reform of corporate taxation that will advance Germany as a business location.”
For the Federal Minister of Finance, the fight against tax fraud is a question of credibility. The honest ones shouldn’t be the stupid ones. He calls it a question of justice to take decisive action against tax crime. “Every year the state loses billions through tax evasion and sales tax fraud.” The authorities are confronted with highly professional groups of perpetrators. The experiences of the last decade have made it clear that effective combating of tax crime is essential to maintaining the state’s revenue base and ensuring the integrity and fairness of the national tax system.
325 self-disclosures with more than 25,000 euros in evaded taxes
After half a year ago Federal Ministry of Finance According to published statistics, the fines and criminal cases offices of the tax offices completed a total of 50,018 criminal proceedings in 2024. There are no newer numbers. 5,154 cases concerned self-disclosures for tax evasion with an evaded amount of up to 25,000 euros. A further 325 cases involved major voluntary disclosures. Here, further prosecution was waived in exchange for a sum of money totaling four million euros being paid to the state treasury. In these cases, the following graduation is provided for by law: ten percent of the tax evaded if the amount evaded does not exceed 100,000 euros; 15 percent of the tax evaded if the amount evaded exceeds 100,000 euros and does not exceed one million euros. 20 percent of the evaded tax if the amount evaded exceeds one million euros. In all cases, the evaded tax plus default interest is due.
The financial policy spokesman for the Union faction, Fritz Güntzler, reacted cautiously to Klingbeil’s intention. The coalition has not yet discussed this. “Of course we look at every suggestion carefully.” In an interview with the FAZ, the CDU politician pointed out the consequences that such a change in the law would have. Companies are obliged to submit regular advance returns for sales tax. These estimates would often be corrected after the end of the year if the correct figures were available. This is now classified as a voluntary disclosure. It is therefore an exciting question as to how we want to deal with such cases in the future.
Limiting voluntary disclosure that exempts from punishment is just one element of a larger action plan that Klingbeil’s ministry is currently working on. They also want to set up a central contact point at the Federal Central Tax Office to which whistleblowers can turn in the future. It is said that whistleblowers are essential for uncovering tax crimes. It is also planned to bring together data known to the tax authorities in a platform “in order to evaluate data using AI in the future, identify risks and detect crimes more effectively”. Ultimately, the federal government wants to acquire tax data centrally more often. The acquisition of tax data by the federal states has repeatedly led to valuable insights in order to uncover criminal structures and organized tax evasion.
