Criminal tax law

The area of criminal tax law includes all those legal provisions that threaten violations of tax law requirements with sanctions. The elements of crime under substantive criminal tax law are tax evasion (Section 370 of the German Fiscal Code), fraud (Section 372 of the German Fiscal Code), smuggling on a commercial, violent or gang basis (Section 373 of the German Fiscal Code) and tax evasion (Section 374 of the German Fiscal Code).

Tax evasion (Section 370 AO) is the central offense in criminal tax law. Such an offense is committed by anyone who intentionally causes a tax evasion or obtains an otherwise unjustified tax advantage by an active act or omission in breach of duty.

Taxes are regularly evaded by anyone who makes false or incomplete statements to the tax office in the tax return, in tax applications or in applications and information. The details of the information that must be provided can be found in the relevant tax laws, such as the Value Added Tax Act.

In the area of criminal tax law, general tax law is overlaid by the special features of criminal proceedings. As a result of this overlapping of the Tax Code (as procedural law for taxation proceedings) by the Code of Criminal Procedure (as procedural law for criminal proceedings), a variety of tensions can arise due to the sometimes conflicting procedural codes. In particular, serious contradictions arise due to the fact that an accused person has a comprehensive right to remain silent in criminal proceedings, while in tax law, on the other hand, the taxpayer is obliged to cooperate and provide information.

Against this background, early, preventive advice from a specialist lawyer in this field is particularly important and expedient for you. On the one hand, we advise you at an early stage to avoid conflict situations under criminal tax law. On the other hand, in the event of criminal tax proceedings, we will defend you professionally and often in close cooperation with the respective tax advisors.

Precisely because the borderline to criminal tax evasion may have been crossed quite unnoticed and a possible intentional act is quickly assumed by the tax prosecution authorities, proper advice based on sound knowledge of tax law is the key to the best possible defense.

We can optimally defend you in the area of criminal tax law, as we not only have the practical experience in criminal proceedings, but also have an overview of tax law in its entirety as well as the existing economic interrelationships. On this basis, we pursue your individual defense goal together with you – whether it is the discontinuation of the proceedings, the avoidance of a trial, or the most lenient sentence possible.