tax evasion
noun · Steuerhinterziehung
Steuerhinterziehung is the right word for tax evasion, the criminal offence of § 370 AO, but the line it draws matters. English tax avoidance, the lawful arranging of affairs to pay less, is not Steuerhinterziehung, it is Steuergestaltung, lawful unless it becomes an abuse caught by § 42 AO. Rendering avoidance as Steuerhinterziehung turns lawful planning into a crime.
Which translation, when
Why
English separates tax evasion, which is criminal, from tax avoidance, which is lawful even if aggressive, with a general anti-abuse rule policing the far end. German law draws the same line but with different labels, and the translation can blur it. Steuerhinterziehung, § 370 AO, is the crime, giving the tax authority false or incomplete information, or leaving it in the dark where there is a duty to speak, and thereby reducing the tax due, and it carries fine or imprisonment, up to ten years in serious cases. What English calls avoidance is Steuergestaltung or Steuervermeidung, lawful, and it stays lawful unless it amounts to a Gestaltungsmissbrauch, an inappropriate legal construction chosen only to avoid tax, which § 42 AO then recharacterises as if the appropriate arrangement had been used, a tax consequence, not a crime. So the dangerous move is to render tax avoidance as Steuerhinterziehung, which accuses the client of a criminal offence, or to soften Steuerhinterziehung into avoidance, which understates a prosecution. The German word is the crime, the English avoidance is not.
Typical mistakes
- Steuerhinterziehung is the criminal offence of § 370 AO, so translating lawful tax avoidance as Steuerhinterziehung accuses the client of a crime, not of aggressive planning.
- Lawful planning is Steuergestaltung, curbed only where it is an abuse, § 42 AO, which recharacterises the arrangement rather than punishing it, so treating a § 42 adjustment as evasion overstates it.
- Rendering Steuerhinterziehung as tax avoidance understates a criminal charge, § 370 AO, and misleads on the client’s exposure to prosecution.
What matters
A client asking whether a tax-saving scheme is safe, the answer read across into German: calling it Steuerhinterziehung, § 370 AO, brands lawful Steuergestaltung a crime, while the real question is whether § 42 AO would treat the arrangement as an abuse, a tax adjustment rather than a prosecution.
What the machine misses
Tax evasion is rendered Steuerhinterziehung correctly, but the machine applies the same word to tax avoidance, which is wrong, because avoidance is lawful Steuergestaltung, § 42 AO at most recharacterising an abuse, while Steuerhinterziehung is the crime of § 370 AO. A translated text that calls avoidance Steuerhinterziehung accuses the client of a criminal offence, and the reader cannot see that German law, like English, separates the lawful arrangement from the punishable one.
Examples
| to be prosecuted for tax evasion | wegen Steuerhinterziehung verfolgt werden |
| lawful tax avoidance | legale Steuergestaltung |
| an abuse of tax law | ein Gestaltungsmissbrauch |