Again, and only shortly after the last announcement of this kind in July, rumors have come up that the ministry of finance of North Rhine-Westphalia has bought even more CDs with valuable tax information from Switzerland. The federal state thereby contradicts the negotiated tax agreement, which was signed by the responsible authorities in September 2011 and was meant to become effective in 2013. Until now, the social democrats (SPD) and the green party (Grüne) are blocking the ratification of the agreement in the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) because they deem the agreement unfair to the broad mass of tax payers. Continue →

As of last Wednesday, August 1, 2012, the operational Porsche AG is a part of VW AG, as pronounced in the press in June 2012. Due to what is known to the public as a “tax deal”, this transaction was possible without a formal buy-out. Instead, the deal took the form of restructuring of the companies: VW gave one share to Porsche SE and therefore acquired the Porsche AG company on a purchase price of 4,46 billion Euros. The tax savings were estimated at about 1,5 billion Euros. Those taxes would have inured to the benefit of the federal state Baden-Württemberg, Porsche’s place of business. Continue →