Taxpayers Rights in Comparative Perspective. The Protection of Tax Related Information of Individual Taxpayers and the Rationale Behind It. A comparison between the legal systems of Germany and the United States

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Law - Tax / Fiscal Law, grade: 9 Punkte, Maastricht University (Faculty of Law), language: English, abstract: Taxpayers are obliged to file their annual returns which the state needs to fund its expenses for society. By doing so, sensitive and personal information are disclosed to the respective tax administration. Inevitably, the issue of disclosing relevant information arises as well as the question of how to treat the information without harming the basic rights of an individual taxpayer. This thesis contributes to the issue of disclosing tax related information by focusing on tax confidentiality, its development and status, the current legal framework, and the rationale behind the approaches of tax confidentiality, undertaken by different legal systems. More specific, this thesis incorporates a comparison between the jurisdictions of Germany and the United States, examining their national legislative rules on tax confidentiality. By elaborating upon the similarities, differences, and the rationale of tax confidentiality in both systems, the thesis will uncover the fact, that both, Germany and the U.S. have a high level of confidentiality. There exist, however, interesting differences related to the level of confidentiality, and this thesis will conclude that the German system has a higher level of confidentiality, for instance in relation to the exceptions to tax confidentiality.