Tax investigation

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The tax investigation (Brief description: Steufa ) is an organizational unit of the German state tax authorities. Your tasks are the detection and investigation of unknown tax cases in the investigation of tax crimes and tax offenses and the determination of tax bases in these processes. The tax investigation is only responsible for investigations relating to the management of the federal states taxes, the investigation managed by the federal government taxes, duties and charges relating accepts the customs investigation before. Organized is the tax investigation into tax investigation services to selected tax offices. In some German states, these are dependent departments exist in other states exclusively for the prosecution of tax offenses and offenses established tax.

Legal bases

The legal basis for the Steufa can be found in the Tax Code ( AO). § 208 AO determines the duties of Steufa, § 404 AO regulates the rights and duties. A Instructions to the Steufa found in the fifth part of the instructions for the penalties and fines procedure ( control ).

Rights and obligations

For the investigation of tax offenses, officials of the Steufa have the same rights and obligations as the authorities and officials of the police department in accordance with the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, in particular the right of the first access ( § 163 para 1 CCP ), the provisional arrest ( § 127 paragraph 2 Code of Criminal Procedure ), the interrogation of the accused ( § 163a, Section 4 Code of Criminal Procedure ), the hearing of witnesses ( § 163 para 3 Criminal Procedure Code ), and to conduct searches, seizures and telecommunications monitoring. The Steufa, a search or seizure in exigent circumstances ( § 98 Paragraph 1, § 105 para 1 CCP ) order and (110, Section § 404 sentence 2 AO, § 1 CPC ) look through the papers from screening those affected.

Since the officials of the Steufa are also entitled to the rights and obligations of officials of the tax in the tax system, they have a quasi- legal hybrid position. Your area of ​​responsibility includes the investigation of criminal tax matters as well as the determination of tax issues.

Since the Steufa can be both tax and tax criminal act must be clear in every action, whether the Steufa in criminal tax or in the tax system is active. This is important, because it means change the rights and obligations of the taxpayer or the accused crucial. After the initiation of criminal tax proceedings the Steufa is active only due to criminal procedural law principles. After adjustment of the criminal tax proceedings they may no longer be called for requests for information to a third party on criminal procedure norms, but must cite the legal basis for the request for the tax standard.

Has the Steufa the investigations carried out, it shall represent the substantial for the taxation audit findings as well as the changes in the tax base in an audit report in accordance with § 202 Section 1 of AO. The audit report shall be sent to the competent authority for the tax analysis; § 202 Section 2 AO shall apply accordingly. Do the findings have no tax impact, if necessary, it is sufficient to send a note.

Importance for the tax revenue

According to the statistics of the Federal Minister for Finance the tax investigation authorities have made 2002-2012 the following results over the years.