We, at DEHNEN., have been concerned about developments regarding taxpayers’ rights for a long time already – and now, the President of the German Federal Court of Finance, Rudolf Mellinghoff has also raised his voice according to our request: Stop criminalization of taxpayers! Continue →
Taxpayers with US nationality are facing several tax planning and compliance challenges these days. They are taxable in the USA with their worldwide income, regardless of their place of residence. And the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) lately focuses more and more on collection of taxes overseas and makes an effort to prevent tax evasion via foreign financial institutes. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) therefore shall serve these goals by several reporting requirements and thereby strives serious privacy concerns as well as data protection issues. Continue →
German VAT regulations are laid down in the Turnover Tax Act (UStG), the Turnover Tax Implementing Regulation (UStDV) and the Turnover Tax Guidelines (UStR). Since January 2012, a new provision of the Implementing Regulation (UStDV) has come into force which is accompanied by enormous problems for the business practice: The entry certificate was established. Continue →
German Tax Law is known worldwide for its complexity. And as every year, the legislative authority is now preparing the German Annual Tax Act, which is still at an early stage of the legislative process. In the following, we present you a selection of issues raised in the legislative procedure of the Annual Tax Act 2013: Continue →
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 →
More than 23.500 tax evaders have voluntarily disclosed having evaded taxes to the fiscal authorities over the course of the last year.
On December, 24th 2010 newspaper „Die Welt“ quoted a poll with the Ministry of Finance and the regional tax offices of the federal states indicating that Baden-Württemberg alone received an impressive number of 7.409 self-reportings. Continue →
Companies operating in more than one Member State in the European Union still have to face various tax obstacles.
The European Commission believes that these obstacles can only be overcome in a systematic way by providing companies with a consolidated corporate tax base for their EU-wide activities.
Amongst others, the Commission´s Directorate-General responsible for Taxation and the Customs Union is currently working on the common consolidated tax base (CCCTB) Continue →
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerfG) decreed with its November 9th Decision which was published on November 30th that the initial moment of suspicion needed for a search warrant could be provided on the basis of data sold to the Federal Republic of Germany by a Liechtenstein informer.
The constitutional complaint is against the issuing of a search warrant in the preliminary proceedings of a tax evasion case. The appellants were being investigated under the suspicion of tax evasion in the assessment periods 2002-2006.
The district court of Bochum issued the search warrant in question. Continue →
On November 26th 2010 the Bundesrat (Federal Council) approved the 2010 Annual Tax Act (Jahressteuergesetz 2010, JStG 2010).
The JStG 2010 serves the implementation of a number of individual regulations in many different areas of tax law. Among these, the following regulations stand out:
