Bureaucracy: Corona aid: companies and tax advisors at the limit

Most recently, around 45,000 tax consultants were registered with the Federal Ministry of Economics in order to be able to access the aid programs for their clients. It is now about a long list of different corona measures : Bridging Aids I to III, November and December Aid, Restart Aid, Subsequent Requests for Bridging Aid III, Bridging Aid III Plus and Restarting Aid Plus. There are currently around 1.8 million approvals for the various program lines, as the Federal Ministry of Economics announced on request. For bridging aid III alone, there are around 410,000 applications with a volume of 20 billion euros. The tax consultants have to create complex comparative calculations and weigh up which program is suitable for the client.

Aspects of state aid also play a role

If a company has made use of payments from several programs, each of the different programs must be taken into account in the final settlement. This also includes aspects of state aid law. Overall, the company may not exceed the funding amount to which it is fundamentally entitled. Repayments or back payments can be made, emphasized the Federal Ministry of Economics – “depending on the costs actually incurred and the collapse in sales suffered”. The final accounts must therefore be submitted by June 30, 2022. The final accounting procedure is currently being designed for the bridging aid as well as the November and December aid. According to the ministry, the final accounts for the first aid programs can probably be submitted electronically in December 2021. In addition, a summarized submission of the final accounts for the various program lines is planned, “in order to enable efficient processing for the auditing third parties and approval bodies”.

Chamber President Schwab demands: “Content regulations must be established at an early stage and must not be changed afterwards.” The state IT infrastructure must be stable and function flawlessly from the start. In addition, it must be possible in the final settlement to subsequently correct requested aid without restriction – for example if applications were made incorrectly because there were uncertainties about the program specifications or the law on aid. This is also about liability risks for tax advisors.

Tax advisors consider deadlines to be utopian

Above all, the Federal Chamber of Tax Advisors considers the deadline to be utopian. Because there is an enormous volume of work in the law firms anyway: ongoing bookkeeping, advice, short-time work allowance, the 2020 tax returns as well as the disclosure of the annual financial statements and the property tax returns compete with the time-consuming Corona assistance. The Chamber is of the opinion that the deadline for the final account must be extended by at least six months. In addition, the already extended deadline for filing annual tax returns 2020 for tax advisors must be extended by a further three months until the end of August 2021. The same applies to the disclosure of the 2020 annual financial statements in order to “straighten out” everything a little. In addition the situation is made more difficult by the reformed property tax . “It will be a huge feat,” explains BStBK President Schwab. “In order to be able to recalculate the property tax, more than 35 million real estate units have to be revalued.” For taxpayers and their advisors this means: get data and prepare documents. The tax authorities currently provide that the declarations of assessment for the property values ​​must be submitted electronically between July 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022. Here, BStBK President Schwab sees a “blatant disproportion” in the processing time allowed: “Taxpayers have to bring everything in within four months, the administration has more than 24 months for further processing.” Here, too, the Chamber advocates an extension of the deadline. Schwab sees the demands for his guild as justified: “For almost a year and a half, the tax consultants have been looking after their clients with Corona aid and this under enormous time pressure and with a lot of legal ambiguities.” That helps significantly to “keep the economy afloat”. Current economic data show that this is successful: The feared wave of insolvency among medium-sized companies has not materialized. More: Like tax offices and tax investigators Corona – Want to track down fraud