Illegal tax deals: Cum-ex damage could be three times as high as known

Enlarge image

Frankfurt's banking district: Billions in losses from illegal tax deals

Photo: DANIEL ROLAND / AFP

According to media research, the damage caused by cum-ex tax transactions and similar illegal fraud systems is significantly higher than previously assumed.

The total is around 150 billion euros worldwide, reports the ARD magazine “Panorama” (NDR) and the research center “Correctiv”.

You would have researched the new amount together with 15 international media.

Originally, around 55 billion euros was assumed.

In addition to Germany and the USA, at least ten other European countries are affected.

German tax offices alone lost almost 36 billion euros, according to calculations by tax professor Christoph Spengel from the University of Mannheim.

In previous calculations from 2018, Spengel had assumed at least 31.8 billion euros.

In the controversial deals, investors quickly pushed shares with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend entitlements between several participants around the dividend cut-off date.

They let the papers circulate among themselves until the tax authorities no longer knew who they belonged to.

The tax offices reimbursed more taxes than they had previously collected.

In 2012 the tax loophole was closed.

In July of this year, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled that the "Cum-Ex" share transactions for the German tax authorities should be assessed as tax evasion and thus punishable by law.

dab / mic / dpa