Wolfgang Schäuble by foto-face.com
The planned and much discussed 2013 Germany / Switzerland tax treaty could still be scuppered before it takes effect next year.
This treaty, which is still scheduled to come into effect on January 1st, would in effect force Swiss banks to automatically deduct German taxes from the accounts of its German customers who have conveniently parked their money there in the past specifically to avoid this eventuality.
In return the German government would provide a sort of ‘amnesty’ for this criminal activity – for their tax-evasion – and in return demand a single one-off payment for all past taxes.
The German Federal Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, of the CDU, and the corresponding Swiss minister, Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf, had initially signed this treaty in September of last year and would be due to be ratified this November.
There is a slight problem – Germany’s 16 federal states must ratify the treaty and most of the states are led by either the SPD or SPD led coalitions who are not at all enthusiastic about letting Germany’s rich off the hook so easily. They are calling the new treaty unjust, unfair and scandalously in favour of the rich elite – they speak about ‘loopholes’ in the treaty as big as a ‘barn doors’.
It is no coincidence therefore that yesterday the leader of Germany’s SPD announced that he wants to target banks in the next federal election and accused the banking industry of holding politicians to ransom and has duly announced that the reining in of large banks will be in important part of his party’s campaign platform. http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120721-43885.html
‘Tax-evasion’ is a term for efforts by individuals or companies and/or other entities to evade taxes by illegal means. While often confused with the term ‘tax- avoidance’, which is the legal utilization of the tax regime in a country to reduce the amount of tax payable – totally within the limits of the prevailing law of the land.
Obviously, rich people have more wealth and are therefore taxed more however they are now trying to avoid this everywhere and have the state – ie ordinary people – pay for the havoc in the international financial markets from which they themselves benefited the most. http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcatart=2&lang=1
Meanwhile, German tax intake continue to fill German state coffers “A buoyant labor market and an accompanying increase in tax revenues mean that Germany will likely be able to borrow less money than expected this year. This positive trend is expected to continue.” http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16116618,00.html
Meanwhile in France, the new Socialist government looking to pass sweeping fiscal changes which would mean applying higher taxes for the rich and the abolition of their tax breaks.
France’s National Assembly recently adopted the first budget of President Hollande, which – as he had promised in his election campaign – contains tax increases of circa of 7 billion Euro.
The new tax measures – targeted at the rich in France includes a so-called ‘solidarity-levy’ for wealthier Frenchmen – those with a net worth of more than 1.3 million Euro, and include a lowering ceiling for tax exemption on inheritance tax.
In related news, the UK Guardian newspaper’s business editor Ms. Heather Stewart, reported today that the astounding news that circa 1.3 trillion Euro worth of cash has been hidden from tax authorities by the ‘global elite’.
“A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
Read recent previous economic views from the OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog - http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/06/22/euro-2012-daily-report-day-16-later-today-germany-vs-greece-angela-merkel-will-watch-germany-greece-live-at-the-pge-arena-in-gdansk-is-it-a-e-euro-grudge-match-by-contribu/
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Tax evasion in Germany – Planned 2013 Germany / Switzerland tax treaty could still be scuppered – by contributor OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog contributor Mr Filip van der Plas from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
Tags: .taxjustice.net, deutsche welle, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany / Switzerland tax treaty, Germany-Greece .Bail-out Game -, global super-rich elite, Is Germany/Greece a €/ EURO Grudge match?, tax evasion, tax evasion in EU, tax evasion in Germany, thelocal.de, UK Guardian, Wolfgang Schäuble, ‘Tax-evasion’ vs Tax-avoidance
The maximum tax someone in germany would have to pay is 45%. I think that’s enough. If it will be 46% then maybe germans need to voice out their concerns.