Berlin 27-02-2010
The Merkel government has taken an increasingly tough line on tax evasion since its popularity in the polls starting dropping – but if one is to believe the government - this increased tax scrutiny has occured ostensibly been the result of the so-called ‘global financial crisis’ which has severly strained the German state coffers.
Despite loud protests from within and outside Germany, the Berlin government has indicated it will pay cash for stolen Swiss bank data with undeclared holdings by German citizens.
German tax evaders having ‘come clean’ about their Swiss bank holdings – nearly 5900 citizens so far- will provide about 500 million Euros in lost tax revenues financial authorities have indicated today in Berlin.
According to German law, tax evaders who turn themselves in will not be prosecuted, however they will have to pay back the avoided taxes.
How the present, or future German government will react when other foreign governments start openly inducing and promoting criminal behaviour in order to obtain information on German companies, individuals or state institutions – is not clear.
However we can already hear the loud shrill coming from Berlin in years to come were anyone to try this same opportunistic tactic against the German state.
The Swiss President –a rotational post presently held by Doris Leuthard, the country’s economics minister – said on the weekend that a state based on the rule of law should not use illegal data.
So far, Merkel’s own southern German clan – a sour sauce mix of the right-wing CDU &CSU parties – has been largely against the purchases. The head of the CSU Michelbach said the state should try to obtain the data legally, with the aid of the Swiss authorities.
The majority of German tax evaders have been from the west of the country, and in comparison, less than 80 have come from the six former eastern states, excluding Berlin.
It has been estimated that private individual Germans have an estimated 200 billion Euros of undeclared funds in Switzerland.
Tags: berlin government, Merkel Berlin
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