Tax audit: How justified is the fear of an tax audit?

Let’s start with a statistic: Of the approx. 8.5 million companies in Germany, around 150,000 companies were last checked by the tax authorities. This corresponds to a rounded rate of just 1.8%.

The number initially gives little cause for concern. However, this would be too easy, because the larger the company, the higher the probability of being audited. According to the statistics recently published by the Federal Ministry of Finance on the results of tax audits, the audit rate for large companies is 17.1%. A total of 13,000 examiners were recently deployed. These determined additional tax revenue of 13.1 billion euros. In addition, the statistics published by the Federal Ministry of Finance only include so-called “real” tax audits. In addition to these “real” tax audits, however, there are numerous other audits that are recorded in isolated statistics. These facts and figures are cause for concern, aren’t they? Even if the probability of a real tax audit does not seem that high, you should be prepared for an audit. My experience as a tax consultant, with a focus on corporate taxes, the next tax audit will definitely come.

You can find my full column on tax auditing here.

Christian Dobner | TLI Steuerberater