Additional billions in income: Checked, searched and found

Hesse's auditors and tax investigators ensured additional income of more than one billion euros last year. However, that's about a billion euros less than in 2019. Finance Minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU) presented the annual report of the Oberfinanzdirektion Frankfurt together with Chief Finance President Jürgen Roßberg and Finance President Susanne Friedrich on Friday. According to Boddenberg, the total tax revenue in Hesse after the record value of 60 billion euros in 2019 was only 55 billion euros due to the pandemic, although only some of these remained with the state. In connection with the pandemic, Boddenberg recalled that the country had helped the companies with a total of more than 13 billion euros to ensure their liquidity. "It was our goalthat the companies remained solvent, ”said the finance minister. He warned potential tax evaders against the efficiency of the Hessian tax authorities.

The pandemic presented the approximately 11,000 employees in the tax administration with enormous challenges, because, according to Boddenberg, more than 518,000 applications were processed between March 2020 and May 2021, for example to defer taxes or reduce advance payments. At times, he put the tax relief at around 8.8 billion euros. Whether this amount is actually fixed in the end depends on how the financial situation of the relieved companies is after the crisis. With the Corona aid programs, there were even 750,000 applications that the tax administration received. The employees answered 1.7 million calls from Hessen in the tax offices, that was about 250,000 more than in the previous year. The 35 tax offices process tax returns of more than 1,6 million employees and 780,000 companies.

Hessen was ahead in the evaluation of the Panama Papers

"We still have extensive tasks to cope with when it comes to identifying fraud and enabling criminal prosecution," said Boddenberg.

When evaluating the Panama Papers, Hesse was ahead.

These are gigantic amounts of data from more than a million documents in 3,000 offshore companies.

Boddenberg could not quantify how much money was raised with it, the large amount of data would be passed on to other tax authorities at home and abroad for further prosecution.

The central office for combating sales tax fraud and the tax auditors were able to generate around 935 million euros in additional income last year. That is around 800 million euros less than in 2019. According to Boddenberg, these fluctuations have nothing to do with the pandemic, but are caused by the individual cases that have been discovered.

69 VAT fraud cases alone with tax losses of around 287 million euros are currently pending.

In 2020, cases with a tax loss of 33.8 million euros were settled in favor of the tax authorities.

That corresponds to a success rate of 90 percent.

The tax investigation last year provided additional income of around 128 million euros.

In 2019 it was 195 million euros.

Tax fraudsters were sentenced to legally binding prison sentences of 246 years.

In 2019 it was 329 years.

"Every potential tax evader must know that we are always able to identify such cases," warned Boddenberg.

On the trail of organized fraud

Hessen is currently using seven investigation teams to uncover serious organized fraud. These include the so-called cum-ex and cum-cum cases and sales tax fraud in the car trade through fictitious relocation of locations abroad. The investigators have apparently been successful in recent years and have been able to generate around 1.9 billion euros in additional income since 2010. The convicted fraudsters were sentenced to legal imprisonment for almost 120 years.

"We also make a very significant contribution to combating fraud within the application process," added Finance President Friedrich with regard to Corona aid. This is subsidy and not tax fraud. However, the tax administration can help by comparing data. She cited the Corona emergency aid as an example.

Around 134,000 applications were submitted in Hesse, of which, according to Friedrich, 106,000 were approved. In order to uncover discrepancies, Hessen uses the Artificial Intelligence Research Center at the Kassel-Hofgeismar tax office. This has "fished out" around 1500 suspected fraud cases. In cooperation with the public prosecutor's offices and the Hessian State Criminal Police Office, around 900 preliminary investigations are currently pending, Friedrich continued and said: "This is an example of the fact that there have been some cases of fraud."