Angela Merkel’s Government is under pressure from leading German lawmakers to strengthen voluntary disclosure rules allowing German residents to regularise their tax affairs without fear of criminal prosecution.
Hoeness attempted to qualify for voluntary disclosure by admitting €3.2m in evaded taxes. But a trial found that he had not provided sufficient details on individual taxable transactions and had actually hidden €27.2m, ten times the disclosed amount.
Volker Kauder, parliamentary floor leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told Welt am Sonnag newspaper the new fines would “underline that tax evasion is a serious offence against the general public.
Similarly, finance expert Lisa Paus from Greens, Germany’s green political party, said: “The threshold of €50,000 is way too high and must at least be halved.
“We must make sure that those who are honest about their taxes are not worse off than those who dodge taxes.”
Frank Strachan, tax partner at Edwin Coe, said cases similar to Hoeness’ may soon be found in UK courts.
“The severity of the sentence passed down to Uli Hoeness demonstrates the need to ensure disclosures to fiscal authorities are full and complete,” he said.
“I suspect we won’t be waiting long until we start to see a raft of similar sentences for those charged with offshore tax evasion being passed down by the English courts.
“HMRC investigators are armed with ‘Connect’ (a sophisticated data management system) which finally allows them to draw up the dots.
“Anyone seeking to pull the wool over HMRC’s eyes shouldn’t be surprised to get a knock on the door followed by a trip to the cells.”
On Friday, Hoeness said he would accept his prison term and resigned from his post at Bayern Munich.
His trial came in the same week as that of ex-Playboy bunny Swetlana Malowskaya. She was jailed for two and a half years over a €1m tax fraud involving the dislosure of gifts recieved from her 90-year-old lover, German brewery biss Bruno Schubert.
