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Anyone who has to apply for corporate aid because of the Corona crisis can hardly avoid a tax advisor.
Because it is they who, as the "third party reviewing", have to apply for the subsidies.
Only self-employed people are allowed to take the direct route.
The chief representative of the tax consultants, Hartmut Schwab, sits together with his 99,000 tax consultant colleagues in a crucial position in the Corona aid.
He gets all the annoyance of the clients about delayed or not yet received help.
But even with the tax consultants themselves, a lot of anger has now built up.
WORLD:
Mr. Schwab, since last Wednesday you can finally apply for bridging aid for the months of November 2020 to June 2021.
How is it going so far?
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Hartmut Schwab:
Not ideal.
Entrepreneurs and tax consultants are frustrated after just a few days.
There is once again a huge discrepancy between what politics announces - we want to help quickly - and what actually happens.
This is mainly due to the fact that the question-and-answer catalog, the FAQ, presented by the Ministry of Economic Affairs is very vague in many places.
The tax advisor has to guess how it might be meant.
WORLD:
The Ministry has set up a hotline for tax advisors for the first time.
Schwab:
Unfortunately, the hotline is a disaster.
Yes, we wanted such a number, but it doesn't work in that form.
There is no answer to individual questions, the people on the other end of the line simply refer to the FAQ, which is available to everyone on the Internet.
It is not understood that a tax advisor would of course have read the FAQ before calling there.
However, the tax advisor needs further decisions on how to apply in this or that case, what can be included and what cannot.
But exactly such decisions are not made there.
The hotline is nothing more than a new number for the same meaningless answers that we received before.
The stamina is at its lowest in all industries
The longer the lockdown, the more desperate many entrepreneurs become.
Whether fashion retailers, breweries or fitness studios - everyone is now plagued by existential fears.
Another problem is the still sluggish disbursement of aid.
Source: WELT / Lea Freist
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WORLD:
So abolish it immediately?
Schwab:
No, the ministry is on it and is trying to improve it.
Hope dies last.
WORLD:
What is an example of open questions?
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Schwab:
The subject of depreciation of seasonal goods is one such example.
For the first time, retailers can add their fashionable winter goods to the fixed costs and thus have the purchase price of the unsaleable goods reimbursed for the most part.
But what exactly does seasonal goods include?
How are the fixed costs to be calculated if the retailer might still sell the fashion in April?
There are no answers to that.
WORLD:
What does the tax advisor do then?
Schwab:
The tax advisor is waiting to see whether he will get the answer later in a revised version of the FAQ.
As a rule, however, he cannot wait too long because the clients want to receive their liquidity assistance as quickly as possible.
So he somehow gets closer to the core of the topic and hopes that there will be no reclaims of aid that has already been paid out later.
Tax advisors are always concerned that they are on the verge of subsidy fraud.
To avoid this at least perceived criminalization, we urgently demand clear answers from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to our questions.
WORLD:
But the applications are checked again before they are paid out anyway.
You could just submit an application and wait to see if there are any questions.
Schwab:
That is another point that causes a lack of understanding among tax advisors.
If we are already involved in the distribution of state aid as a so-called “third party reviewer”, why is the money not transferred directly after an application prepared and checked by us?
This would solve many of the company's current liquidity problems very quickly.
Instead, there have so far only been advance payments of a maximum of 50 percent of the requested sum, the rest is often paid out much later by the competent approval authorities in the federal states - although 98 percent of the applications go through without even asking the tax advisor.
WORLD:
Could you guarantee that there will be no more abuse without a review by the licensing authorities?
Schwab:
Yes, every single tax advisor would be liable to prosecution.
I have already mentioned the keyword subsidy fraud.
There is also the final invoice at the end.
This means that every aid recipient must prove at the end of the pandemic that the sales shortfalls were actually at the forecast level.
A delayed payout now, when businesses are in dire straits, does far more harm than good.
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WORLD:
How exactly should the final bill work?
Schwab:
There are still many unanswered questions: Does a final invoice have to be prepared separately for each auxiliary program?
Or does the tax advisor have to summarize the individual aid pledges that were granted during the course of the pandemic?
And who is checking all of this anyway?
WORLD:
And how exactly?
Schwab:
I don't think there is a very deep approach.
Certainly lower for the large applications than for the small ones.
However, there will certainly be samples of self-employed people as well as large retailers.
WORLD:
Which entrepreneurs are currently pushing for the new bridging aid to be applied for?
Schwab:
That is primarily the retail sector.
Many people there are worried that they will even get back on their feet.
In addition, clients from the hotel and catering sectors are jostling.
Many are still waiting for parts of the November and December aid.
Bridging aid II, i.e. aid for the months September to December, is also stalling.
Many applications have to be checked again because the question of whether an applicant has to prove a loss was unclear for a long time.
WORLD:
The topic came up before Christmas.
Schwab:
That's right, but the application platform does not yet allow subsequent changes to applications that have already been made.
It must first be reprogrammed.
Since the platform for the bridging aid III had to be built first, the new software for the bridging aid II will probably not be ready until the end of the month.
The tax advisors are once again getting rid of the anger of the entrepreneurs.
Not only are they the bearers of bad news, they are also the worry uncles.
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WORLD:
Despite everything, tax advisors don't have any reason to complain, right?
Hardly any other industry has as many orders.
Schwab:
I don't assume that otherwise we would have less work.
In all law firms the employees are pushing mountains of remaining vacation time, the job market for tax consultants has been swept clean.
Therefore a lot of other things are left behind.
Fortunately, the deadline for filing the 2019 tax return has been extended from the end of February to the end of August.
WORLD:
So everything is fine, isn't it?
Schwab:
I don't want to complain about too much work.
But there is great resentment among tax advisors about the government's aid programs and the role they are now playing in them.
In the spring of last year, there was only talk of tax advisors becoming a compliance authority.
“You should just verify the numbers,” the politicians told us, so that something like the one with the emergency aid does not happen again at the very beginning, when many applicants received money even though they were not entitled.
WORLD:
As a "third party checking" you should prevent abuse.
Schwab:
We are happy to do our part.
But now we are more corona than tax consultants.
That doesn't have much to do with the original assignment.
Bridging Aid II, Bridging Aid III, November Aid, December Aid, Restart Aid - solo self-employed people and small business owners no longer have a chance to keep track of things on their own.
Before an application can even be submitted, comprehensive comparative calculations are necessary.
Because if a company applies for one program, the other is no longer possible.
The piecemeal creates problems for everyone.
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WORLD:
There is a demand that the tax authorities should have taken over the examination and payment.
Schwab:
Yes, that would have worked better, tax offices check the balance sheets, annual financial statements and income / surplus accounts anyway.
You have all the numbers and could assign the aids directly.
Although I don't think that the tax offices would have packed the staff, they are already working to the limit.
WORLD:
What do you want from politics?
Schwab:
More planning security for everyone.
A new aid program is announced, and when the details come out, as was the case last four weeks with bridging aid III, the reality will deviate significantly from the announcement.
Don't get me wrong, the working level of the ministries involved does a good job.
But the back and forth understandably causes frustration for everyone involved.
I would find it very helpful if a concept was fully developed and only then presented to the public.
WELT:
Then there would be the accusation that politics did nothing.
Schwab:
At the beginning of the pandemic, I still understood that, a lot had to be improvised.
But now I have no understanding for it.
Take the hardship fund that Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier conjured up from his hat this week.
The federal government wants to provide 1.5 billion euros for companies that do not benefit from the previous aid programs.
Desires are aroused again, which in the end, when the experts from the ministries have worked out the conditions, cannot be met - and we tax advisors get the angry calls again.
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"Alles auf Aktien" is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team. Every morning from 7:00 am with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz. For stock market experts and beginners.
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