A special unit of the Bavarian tax investigation department founded ten years ago has brought the state additional income of 1.7 billion euros. Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) drew this balance on Friday for the tenth anniversary of the Special Commission for Serious Tax Fraud (SKS) based in Nuremberg. It was founded in 2013 under the aegis of the then head of department and current Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and takes care of particularly serious and extensive tax crimes. Since then, the “elite group” has grown from 60 to now more than 200 employees. “It’s impossible to imagine life without it” is the model for success, said Füracker, and action is taken against “the big tax fraudsters”.
For example, the SKS pursues organized crime (OC), commercial tax evasion by gangs and clans. Among other things, it is about pyramid schemes and tax havens, often about complex foreign relations. In any case, OK is on the rise with economic crimes in the Free State, as situation reports from the police and judiciary show. The SKS also supports other authorities in combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Their cases include so-called sales tax carousels, in which goods are pushed around Europe, often only on paper, and criminals have taxes refunded that were never paid. That works with cars as well as with electronics, “there is nothing in sales tax fraud that does not exist,” says an investigator. They even had to deal with toilet paper.
Cases often get started when something arouses suspicion at a tax office somewhere in Bavaria. The SKS is not a nationwide unicum, there are similar units elsewhere. For the five-year balance sheet of the SKS, the additional tax collected was still estimated at almost 400 million euros. The significant increase after a decade is likely to have something to do with the increased staff. At the start of the unit in 2013, the opposition had sensed “false labeling”, since initially only investigators from a previously existing special inspection group were in action – and Söder still boasted about the Bavarian “tax FBI”.
Today Tim Pargent, Green financial politician in the state parliament, speaks of the “successful work of the SKS”. Nevertheless, this could not cover up a general understaffing in the tax administration: “In the decisive measure of tax cases to tax officials, Bavaria is in the penultimate place in a state comparison.” In addition, the CSU is blocking an online portal for anonymous fraud tips in Bavaria. Such a portal in Baden-Württemberg had been reprimanded by Füracker as a “prompt towards informers” and a “green control state idea”. In fact, the Bavarian State Office for Taxes also provides tips and contacts on the Internet for reporting tax evasion.