self-disclosure
noun · Selbstanzeige
A Selbstanzeige under § 371 AO can remove criminal liability for tax evasion, but only on narrow conditions: the disclosure must be complete for the tax type concerned, it must come before the authorities have discovered the matter or announced an audit, and the tax and interest must be paid. It is not a voluntary confession in mitigation but a defined statutory exemption.
Which translation, when
Why
Self-disclosure is the Selbstanzeige, and the pair needs care because the English phrase suggests a voluntary act rewarded with leniency while the German institute is a precisely conditioned statutory exemption from punishment. Under § 371 AO a person who corrects incorrect statements to the tax authority, completes incomplete ones or supplies what was omitted can escape punishment for tax evasion. The conditions are strict and each of them has ended careers. The disclosure must be complete: it has to cover all unprescribed offences of the tax type concerned for the periods the statute defines, so a taxpayer who discloses one account and keeps another has not made a valid Selbstanzeige, and the incomplete attempt itself sits on the file. It must be timely: the exemption is barred once an audit order has been notified, once a criminal or fine procedure has been opened and communicated, once the offence has been discovered and the taxpayer knew or had to reckon with the discovery, and in the further situations the provision lists. And the money must follow: the evaded tax and the interest must be paid within the period set, with an additional surcharge above defined amounts, in which case the effect is not exemption under § 371 but a bar to prosecution under the neighbouring provision. One boundary should be kept visible in any translation. Where a taxpayer subsequently notices that a filed return was incorrect, the Fiscal Code imposes a duty to notify and correct without undue delay, and if he acted neither intentionally nor recklessly that is a Berichtigung and no offence arises at all, so treating every correction as a self-disclosure puts a criminal frame around an ordinary compliance step.
Typical mistakes
- The exemption requires a complete disclosure for the tax type concerned, so a partial disclosure fails and remains on the file as evidence.
- Notification of an audit order or discovery of the offence bars the route, so timing rather than willingness decides whether it is available.
- A correction under the duty to notify is not a Selbstanzeige where neither intent nor recklessness was present, so calling it one imports a criminal frame.
What matters
Advising a client who has found an error in a German return: the first question is whether intent or recklessness was involved, since an ordinary correction and a Selbstanzeige run on entirely different provisions and timetables.
What the machine misses
Automatic translation renders self-disclosure as Selbstoffenbarung or Selbstanzeige used for every correction, and the institute of § 371 AO is a conditioned exemption from punishment requiring completeness, timeliness and payment; the loose usage also erases the line to the ordinary duty to correct a return, where no offence arises at all.
Examples
| voluntary self-disclosure | die Selbstanzeige |
| exemption from punishment | die Straffreiheit |
| the disclosure must be complete | die Anzeige muss vollständig sein |
| the duty to notify and correct | die Berichtigungspflicht |