You can rest assured that nothing gets overlooked while you focus all your energies on your core business. Rüter & Partner will handle your annual German tax declaration obligations and is happy to provide you with any event-specific consulting needs:

• gift or inheritance taxes;
• succession consulting;
• simple declarations;
• tax structuring — with comprehensive support both during the drafting and the execution phases;
• VAT issues; and
• full compliance requirements.

We will handle all correspondence with the German Internal Revenue service and other public authorities on your behalf. We will also file all necessary tax returns and applications, and will protect your rights by filing any needed appeals on time.

Under us, your tax burden becomes a manageable event. We take the time to show you what refunds to expect and what economically sensible steps to take to minimize your tax obligations.

Based on your wishes and requirements, we will personalize our services to dovetail with your individual needs. Our range of support extends from small-scale to comprehensive services.

We also handle all company registrations and registrations with government agencies and public authorities within the scope of the German Tax Consulting Act.

In addition, you get from us decades of experience with a huge range of industries and structures, most notably:

• with subsidiaries of multinational corporations;
• the hotel and restaurant industry;
• closed-end real estate funds with complex international shareholding structures;
• family offices; and
• the IT sector.

Besides the legal obligation of keeping company records, business accounting is an essential tool for corporate management. That is why we will handle not only your financial accounting, but will actively provide our expertise in seamlessly recording all business transactions and in developing easy-to-understand analysis presentations … all to give you a valid financial basis for your corporate decision-making processes.

Letting us handle your financial accounting will translate into numerous advantages for your company. For example, you will save considerable expense on software and hardware, human resources, office equipment, and much more. In addition, you will benefit from our experience and professionalism, from transferring liability to us, and from our interdisciplinary skills.

By choosing Rüter & Partner you will be hiring consultants who will actively support the development of your company.

For your benefit, our firm uses the DATEV system, a software solution for German CPA firms that handles almost all tasks from accounting, payroll and tax filings to economic consulting and more.

In addition to conventionally preparing your accounting reports, we can also process your accounting transactions right on your in-house system via remote access or other technical solutions. Here we can provide our rich experience with numerous conventional accounting systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Intacct, NetSuite, etc.) to best serve your needs.

Service components

• The DATEV Unternehmen online accounting system (with digital paperless accounting on request), receivables and collections management (receivables and payables);
• Maintaining an ‘outstanding items list’ for both our customers and their suppliers;
• Dunning;
• Operational analyses;
• Processing and clearing of all payment transactions;
• Set-up and maintenance, plus processing and clearing of payment transactions via trust accounts, if necessary;
• permanent extensions of deadlines; and
• Ongoing care and development of capital assets.

We handle payroll accounting for companies having a staff of between one and several hundred employees. Here, we support our clients even in collecting and administering their HR data.

For special-case assessments such as payroll journals or reports to the German Revenue Service and the German Social Security Administration, the employer has a choice of posting lists as well as payment media. We manage all of the client’s necessary documents for potential tax and Social Security audits. On request we will also be glad to advise you on stock options, stock savings plans, assigning staff abroad, or separate salary taxation.

Whether by email, as a download, or by postal mail — our clients can decide in what manner and scope they wish to receive their payroll documentation and evaluations. Per the client’s request, a ‘digital HR file’ allows the easy, fast and secure online exchange of documents such as employment contracts or university enrollment certificates when needed for payroll accounting.

Enterprises in the restaurant, hotel, construction and meat industries particularly are faced with special payroll accounting requirements and have to observe additional duties under German Social Security law. With our proven expertise, we provide highly experienced, professional and non-bureaucratic support in these industries.

Thanks to our decades of support to the German subsidiaries, branch offices or representations of multinational companies, we can provide our clients with specially seasoned and professional support in all areas and variations of payroll accounting. We are proud to offer the entire spectrum of services – from handling NREs (non-registered entities) that only requires registering for Social-Security purposes all the way to the accounting of stock options and overseas employment assignments by multinational corporations.

Service components

• Determining the best-possible methods for wage and salary payments;
• Providing ongoing payroll accounting;
• Transmitting correct data to German Internal Revenue offices, banks, and health insurance companies;
• Calculating vacation pay, holiday pay and sick pay;
• Settling overtime payments, bonuses and travel expenses;
• Preparing notifications to the German Social Security Administration;
• Preparing all certifications and applications;
• Supporting you during income tax and Social Security audits;
• Creating statistics (e.g., an overview of hourly wages or staff expenses) and direct forwarding of paychecks to employees, either by mail or electronically;
• Setting up and supporting NREs’ employee income-tax advance payments; and
• Preparing monthly payroll reports.

In consultation with you, we will prepare your annual balance sheets and corporate tax returns in accordance with the relevant German legislation. These will be based either on your own accounting reports or on the annual figures you provide – and with due consideration of your special needs for internal control. All relevant documents will be prepared in line with the commercial-law and tax-law provisions for annual account auditing, and will be additionally safeguarded in our digital document files.

Based on our long-time experience with international corporations and medium-sized corporate entities, we will also prepare your annual financial statements per the individual requests of the respective auditing firm.

We are likewise able to transfer extensive volumes of data from outside application systems such as SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Intacct, etc.

For freelance professionals or trades people exempt from the statutory obligation to keep records, we can prepare your required annual net-income accounts as well as any additional annual financial statements.

Service components

• Annual financial statements for ‘balance-sheet accounting clients’ and clients obliged by law to keep accounts;
• Balance sheets: both commercial balance sheets and tax balance sheets (with Notes);
• Profit and Loss statements;
• Electronic publication in the German government’s Federal Gazette;
• Creation and electronic transmission of electronic balance sheets;
• Net income accounts according to Section 4 of the German Income Tax Act [EStG]; and
• All corporate tax returns (corporate tax and business tax, sales tax, declarative statements, etc.).

The need to value a company or corporate shares may arise for a number of reasons. These include inheritance and gift tax calculations, arranging for a company succession, admitting new shareholders, drafting compensation clauses in articles of association, or resolving disputes. Company and office evaluations are also regularly needed to establish an adequate purchase price.

We will identify the correct company or office value appropriately adapted to the respective event and based on recognized valuation principles. This will provide you with easy-to-understand and conclusive expert analyses to allow decision making tailored to your needs, such as a purchase or a sale.

Our commercial consulting services assist and support our clients in all areas of business management, such as:

• analyses of costs and gross profit;
• evaluating corporate key figures;
• liquidity evaluation and liquidity planning;
• investment consulting;
• and more.

Why not also take advantage of our close contacts with major banks? We regularly assist our clients with loan and investment advisory services, specifically regarding taxation. And for corporate reorganizations, we will also be glad to serve as your competent advisor.

Unlike in the past, audits have become inevitable – not least due to the ever-advancing digitization and resulting transparency even of large volumes of data. Audits become more common as soon as companies reach a certain size or certain income thresholds, or if your enterprise is in an industry permanently under the auditors’ special scrutiny.

We will gladly support you during any audits your company may face over the course of time — regardless of whether the audits are in-house or imposed from outside authorities.

Our support extends to audits for any purpose: general corporate accounting, Social Security, external wage tax payments, special sales tax compliance, etc. We will advise and supervise every audit by handling all correspondence on your behalf. Thanks to our long-standing experience in working with auditors, we guarantee excellent service.

Before the end of 2014 when errors on tax returns were not promptly corrected, erring taxpayers had to pay a minimum fine with interest. Since 2015, payers of non-corrected tax returns have had to pay far higher fines. The thresholds have lowered and the chances of jail time have increased.

These Government interventions against undisclosed income and questionable tax structures are increasingly forcing concerned parties to get their business affairs in order – even across national borders. And the only way to obtain immunity from punishment for tax offenses is voluntary disclosure. Besides, many taxpayers do not realize a simple rule of the German Fiscal Code – that correcting errors in earlier tax returns must be done immediately to prevent any suspicion of tax evasion despite taxpayers’ best intentions. The formal way out of this dilemma is, again, voluntary disclosure.

Thanks to our long-standing experience in dealing with the German Internal Revenue authorities, we will assist you in all aspects of subsequent declarations of income. These are particularly important to quickly resolve any misunderstandings and to keep public authorities from taking any action which can lead to non-tax-law problems.