How does an unannounced till inspection proceed?
Without prior notice and outside an external audit, during ordinary business and working hours (§ 146b Abs. 1 Satz 1 AO, German Fiscal Code; the German term is Kassen-Nachschau). Officials of the tax authority may enter business premises in order to establish matters that may be relevant to taxation. What is examined is the propriety of the records of cash receipts and cash payments as well as the proper use of the electronic recording system under § 146a Abs. 1 AO (Satz 2).
What the inspection is not
It is not an external audit. The statute says so expressly: outside an external audit. From that follows the point that matters most in practice — the legal consequences of an external audit arise only once there is a transition to one, and that transition must be notified in writing under § 146b Abs. 3 AO. Living quarters may be entered against the occupant's will only within the narrow limits of subsection 1 sentence 3.
What applies
The provisions in this table are German law. Most European legal orders know the same principle — set out verbatim and by country in the register of legal bases.
| Point | Legal basis | What applies |
|---|---|---|
| Without notice | § 146b Abs. 1 Satz 1 AO | Without prior notice, during ordinary business and working hours. |
| Subject matter | § 146b Abs. 1 Satz 2 AO | Also the proper use of the electronic recording system under § 146a Abs. 1 AO. |
| Living quarters | § 146b Abs. 1 Satz 3 AO | Against the occupant's will only to avert urgent dangers to public safety and order. |
| Transition | § 146b Abs. 3 AO | The transition to an external audit must be notified in writing. |
| Technical duty | § 146a Abs. 1 Sätze 1 bis 3 AO | Individually, completely, correctly, in good time, in order — protected by a security module, storage medium and uniform digital interface. |
| Afterwards | § 158 Abs. 2 Nr. 1 AO | A finding during the inspection does not replace the examination of whether there is cause to object to substantive accuracy. |
The critical moment is the data export
As a rule the inspection calls for a data export from the till system. What comes out of it is the basis of every later finding — and it is the same dataset that you too can have analysed. Whoever secures a copy of the export holds the basis of the examination and does not have to rely later on the summary in the report.
What frequently happens afterwards
An anomaly in the export leads to notice of an external audit. Often these are phenomena the system produces by design — gaps in number sequences, transactions appearing twice, time differences between till and security module. Whether it is a finding or a technical peculiarity is decided by the data, not by the ratio.
What we contribute
We analyse the same export the authority received, check completeness and consistency, and separate technical peculiarities from genuine findings. For every point we present an assessment, the reasoning and a recommendation — including where a finding speaks against you.
The legal provisions reproduced here are for information and do not replace legal advice. For application in an individual case the legal position at the time of the proceedings must be examined by a lawyer admitted in the country and field concerned.