On 28 September 2011, the German Ministry of Finance (BMF) released the final application decree for the electronic tax balance sheet and profit-and-loss-account (E-Tax Balance Sheet) and published the final general taxonomy (supplemented by complementary taxonomies) and the final special taxonomies.
All companies obliged to determine their income using double-entry accounting in Germany must submit – for all fiscal years starting after 31 December 2011 – an E-Tax Balance Sheet (or an electronic book/tax schedule) in a standardized data format (“taxonomy”) as an appendix to their German electronic company tax return. The first year (i.e. fiscal year 2012 or the deviating year 2012/2013) will be treated as a grace period (i.e. an E-Tax Balance Sheet is not yet compulsory – a hard copy version still can be submitted).
All companies with German E-Tax Balance Sheet filing obligations should ensure that they evaluate and understand the new requirements that apply as from the beginning of their fiscal year 2012, and they should review and determine their strategic approach to the E-Tax Balance Sheet and prepare a full review (“mapping”) of all charts of accounts used in Germany against the applicable taxonomy. Completing the mapping exercise is necessary for a company to know the resources required (i.e. time, budget, personnel, etc.) to implement an E-Tax Balance Sheet. As part of the fiscal year 2010 tax return (or at the latest, as part of the return for fiscal year 2011), all companies must compare (or have their German tax return preparer compare) their tax balance sheets or book/tax schedules to the applicable taxonomy to ensure sufficient compliance.
Taxpayers should use fiscal year 2012 (or their deviating year 2012/2013) for preparing and filing an E-Tax Balance Sheet for testing purposes. As there is no codified legal basis for the grace period in the final BMF guidance, taxpayers should understand that if they were to take matters to court e.g. because the tax authorities denied the grace period to the taxpayer based on certain specific reasons, the courts would not be bound by the BMF guidance on the grace period.
Deloitte can support all foreign groups with the full mapping of their charts of accounts used in Germany against the applicable taxonomy. Deloitte has developed an electronic mapping tool, which can be used for groups with only one unified chart of accounts in Germany, as well as groups with more than one chart of accounts in Germany (and consolidated financial statements, e.g. IFRS or US GAAP). This mapping tool produces an overview that ERP users (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Navision, etc.) can utilize for programming a new E-Tax Balance Sheet report. Deloitte’s mapping tool also contains a method to ensure it is complete (i.e. that all available accounts been mapped) and a first taxonomy analysis (i.e. how many positions of the taxonomy have been used as part of the mapping).
Please contact the authors of this article at gtln@deloitte.de or your regular Deloitte contact if you wish to receive a more detailed updated E-Tax Balance Sheet brochure or if you would like to discuss further.
