Recovery and Notification
The growing amount of international passenger transport and capital transactions facilitates more and more tax fraud tax evasion. In order to counter this trend, the EU Member States and other countries have decided to increase cooperation between the tax authorities. In this way, administrative authorities of other countries can provide notification of administrative acts and other decisions as well as recover taxes for other cooperating countries.
Requests
Pursuant to the EU Recovery Directive, the following requests are permitted:
- Requests for information for enforcement purposes
- Requests for notification
- Requests for recovery
- Requests for precautionary measures
Germany’s Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt) submits domestic requests to the competent foreign authority and receives corresponding foreign requests.
Legal Bases
The legal bases of international administrative assistance when collecting taxes stem from:
- Law of the European Communities, Directive 2010/24/EU (EU Recovery Directive), Implementing Regulation 1189/2011 updated/changed by Commission Implementing Regulation 1966/2011 (EU Implementing Regulation) and Commission Implementing Decision K (2011) 8193 (EU Implementing Decision) and
- the double taxation agreement or juridical and administrative assistance agreements, to the extent that these contain regulations on the collection of taxes.
Directive 2010/24/EU has been implemented into national law by the EU Recovery Act of 7 December 2011 (BGBl. I page 2592). The wording of a so-called recovery clause for double taxation agreements can be found in Article 27 of the OECD Model Convention.
Regulations
Note: The Federal Central Tax Office does not assume any liability for the completeness and correctness of the legal provisions made available here. The editorial staff makes every effort to incorporate current changes in a timely manner. As the updates, especially in the case of extensive changes, may take some time, however, no guarantee can be given that the status of the legal provisions provided is always up to date.
The same applies to the content of pages which have not been created by the Federal Central Tax Office but to which reference is made (links). Only publications in the official publication organ (usually the Federal Law Gazette or Federal Gazette) have an official character.
Leaflets
Forms
NOTE
So that your authority can be informed about possible changes to international recovery assistance in the future, please designate a contact person for international recovery assistance and notify us in the event of changes, where applicable.
If your authority would like to use international recovery assistance from time to time in the future, we recommend setting up a central e-mail inbox (e.g. beitreibungsamtshilfe@stadt.de). This ensures the BZSt can conduct proper forwarding to your authority, even in the event that the local processor changes.
The program to create requests pursuant to the Recovery Directive 2010/24/EU is password-protected.
After requesting the password using a contact form or by mail to
Bundeszentralamt für Steuern
Steuerabteilung Internationale Zwischenstaatliche Amtshilfe - Beitreibung
An der Küppe 1
53225 Bonn
the password needed will be sent to you in letter form.
You will then have the chance to download the client software needed to create electronic requests.
Note
The European Commission has begun replacing the previously used client software for processing e-forms with a central web application (e-Form Central Application).
In an initial step, the contact offices of the Member States (including the BZSt) received access on 1 January 2019.
According to current plans, the land and municipality revenue authorities are expected to begin using the central web application at the end of 2019. A web link and a certificate are used to access the application.
The web link and certificate will be available for you to download in advance – but likely not until the end of 2019 – on this page. Here, you will also receive information on which date processing the transactions will be possible in the future with the central web application.
Questions and answers
Which types of claims can be recovered using a request for recovery according to the EU Recovery Directive or according to DTAs or legal and administrative assistance agreements with collection clauses?
Only claims pertaining to taxes and any ancillary services fall within the scope of application of the EU Recovery Directive (see Section 1 EU Recovery Act). The same applies for DTAs or legal and administrative agreements. In this case, the scope of application results from the respective agreement texts.
Can individuals also recover civil law receivables/claims using a request for recovery pursuant to the EU Recovery Directive or DTAs or legal and administrative assistance agreements?
No, the administrative assistance in recovery matters pursuant to the EU Recovery Directive and DTAs or legal and administrative assistance agreements remains reserved for the competent authorities of the EU Member States or third countries for tax claims.
