Tax Honesty Act

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Basic data
Title: Tax Honesty Act
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Tax law
References : 611-1-32 (old: 610-1-3, 600-1)
Issued on: December 23, 2003
( BGBl. 2003 I p. 2928 )
Entry into force on: December 30, 2003
and April 1, 2005
GESTA : D032
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law to promote tax honesty ( Federal Law Gazette 2003 I p. 2928 ) is an article law that allows social authorities, customs, police and tax offices to query the account master data of bank customers ( account retrieval ). This is used to control the information provided in applications for social benefits and in tax returns , to detect abuse of benefits and tax offenses .

Law on Exemption from Punishment

Article 1 of the Act contains the Act on Declaration of Exemption from Punishment (Punishment Exemption Act - StraBEG) - also known as the Amnesty Act - which gave "tax evaders" after December 31, 2003 and before April 1, 2005 the opportunity to provide incorrect or incomplete information about tax-relevant facts correct. The result of the correction was a tax amnesty . The federal government and legislators hoped that this "bridge to tax honesty" would generate additional tax revenue of five billion euros. In fact, the additional tax revenue amounted to only about 1.4 billion euros, i.e. 28 percent of the estimated amount. In contrast to previous tax amnesties, this was based on a reduced assessment base , depending on the type of tax evaded , so that less tax had to be paid than was required by honest taxpayers.

Tax Code

Article 2 of the law changed the tax code . The change allows the tax offices to call up data from the files to be kept in accordance with Section 93b of the Tax Code via the Federal Central Tax Office, if this is necessary for the determination or collection of taxes and a request for information from the taxpayer did not lead to the goal or does not promise success. Other authorities and courts can also receive information if their own investigations were unsuccessful or unsuccessful and the law they implement is linked to terms of the Income Tax Act (e.g. social assistance , training subsidies , housing benefit ). This change took effect on April 1, 2005. For the development of the account requests, see the main article Account request .

Decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court

Application for a preliminary injunction

The Federal Constitutional Court refused on 23 March 2005, an interim order to adopt, with the entry into force of the amendment should be the tax code prevents April 1 of 2005.

Constitutional complaint

The Federal Constitutional Court considers the rules on automatic account retrieval in the judgment of June 13, 2007 to be largely legal. The ability to query account master data is therefore largely in accordance with the Basic Law. Section 93 (8) of the Tax Code was incompatible with the Basic Law, as it did not sufficiently specify the details. The amendment to Section 93 (8) of the Tax Code called for by the Federal Constitutional Court was made through Article 6 of the 2008 Corporate Tax Reform Act .

Norm control procedures

In 2005, had Finanzgericht Köln to the Federal Constitutional Court in the context of judicial review proceedings submitted the questions to decide whether

  1. the provisions of Sections 20 (1) and 32a of the EStG in the version relevant for the assessment periods 2000 to 2002 are incompatible with the Basic Law insofar as they, in conjunction with the supplementary provisions of the Law on Exemption from Penalties, subject taxpayers to a higher tax rate than those who are dishonest and
  2. the provision of Section 20 (1) No. 7 EStG is incompatible with the Basic Law because the enforcement of the tax claim arising from the withdrawal of interest income is largely thwarted due to structural obstacles to enforcement .

On February 25, 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the submission of the Cologne Finance Court as inadmissible.

literature

  • Mario Bergmann, Marco Eickmann: The reasons for exclusion of the exemption from punishment and voluntary disclosure in comparison . In: wistra . Volume 23, 2004, pp. 372-376.

Web links

See also

swell

  1. ^ Order of the Federal Constitutional Court of June 13, 2007
  2. ↑ Section 93 (8) AO in the version criticized by the BVerfG
  3. ↑ Finanzgericht Köln, decision of September 22, 2005, Az. 10 K 1880/05
  4. ^ Federal Constitutional Court, decision of February 25, 2008, 2 BvL 14/05.