The most amazing thing about the dispute over a digital reporting portal for tax evaders is the fake outrage. Baden-Württemberg’s Green Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz has taken the liberty of relocating a practice to the Internet that has long existed in the analogue world: the tax authorities have always been able to anonymously receive information by phone or letter about companies or people that are not properly paying their taxes counting.
The announcement has catapulted the politician – who until a few months ago was still a celebrated enlightener in the Wirecard scandal as a member of the Bundestag – into a bitter moral debate. The CSU accuses him of seducing citizens to denounce. Has the neighbor possibly not registered the cleaning lady? Just one click and the observation can ultimately be turned into a report to the tax office. Should this be the future life in Germany? image headlines that the Green Minister is introducing a “tax Stasi”, which the paper uses to verbally abuse victims of the GDR. The FDP speaks of a “block warden mentality”, thus making comparisons to the Nazi era, and the CDU calls the whole thing a “tax pillory”; after all, only the Middle Ages are concerned.
It is an attempt to brand the Greens as an informer party
So, please take a deep breath. Danyal Bayaz has put a reporting platform into operation, which is part of the tax authorities’ digitization offensive – and an EU directive aimed at protecting whistleblowers. Something similar already exists in other federal states. Instructions have been available on the website of the Bavarian State Tax Office for a long time: how to recognize tax evasion, how to formulate a complaint and where to direct it. Does the CSU think that this is also a seduction to denounce? The hatred and malice that Bayaz now has to fend off is mainly due to the election campaign: attempts have been made for a long time to attach the image of a prohibiting party to the Greens, and now there is an attempt to brand them as that of the informers.
And then all the contradictions: On the one hand, tax secrecy is practically sacred in this country – on the other hand, finance ministers buy data carriers on which thousands of tax evaders are registered. On the one hand, citizens are proud to live in a rule-based constitutional state. On the other hand: help enforce the rules? So please! Unfortunately, it is also true that hardly anyone cares that Germany is considered a safe black money market in Europe because of the combination of a strong rule of law and a weak financial police: landing place for tens of billions of euros that have to be laundered.
Which does not change anything about the fact that the Greens now have an acute problem in the election campaign. Annalena Baerbock as well as Robert Habeck have stood behind their Baden-Württemberg party colleagues and thus also attracted the shitstorm. The question is whether the “informers” laundering will take hold of the people and will therefore cost the party votes – or whether its potential voters are more likely to be those for whom the protection of whistleblowers is important.
It’s basically perfectly fine to make everyone pay their taxes. Only four weeks before the election, the Greens have sparked an open debate that opens the door to demagogy. If that is a move, then at least not a smart one.