Partner Article

Coffee tax doesn’t add up

Germany spent more than 30 times as much collecting taxes on coffee beans ordered online from abroad than it actually received in tax revenues, the accounting office said this week.

Some 4,000 Germans who bought coffee over the Internet from other EU countries but failed to pay the coffee tax have been charged between a few cents to 10 euros in taxes and fees, Dieter Engels, head of Germany’s Federal Accounting Office, told Reuters.

Tax collectors ended up with just 25,000 euros, way below the 800,000 euros of costs accrued collecting the payments, Engels said.

“While the financial and customs authorities are too lax on some occasions, they go overboard in others,” he said. “This has led to somewhat grotesque results in coffee taxation.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .