독일의 세무조사제도와 그 시사점

Abstract

Tax audit is a highly sensitive topic in any country. Therefore, it is important to discipline tax audit by law beforehand. However, due to the difficulty of substantial legal control of tax audit, its procedural control is crucial. In Korea, Chapter Ⅷ-2 of the National Tax Basic Act is responsible for the procedural control of tax audit. This chapter was enacted in 1996. At the beginning, these rules were not greatly attractive to the society. However, the importance of these rules has been emphasized after the Supreme Court recently made important judicial decisions about these rules, especially prohibition of overlapping tax audit according to Article 81-4 of the National Tax Basic Act. However, these rules are mostly established 20 years ago, raising doubts about the adequacy of the rules. So, in this paper, we have introduced Germanys’ tax audit system and tried to draw forth its implications. In Germany, there are three types of tax investigation in which tax officials examine the true facts for the purpose of fair taxation. Among them, we only target tax audit called “Außenprüfung im Steuerrecht”.