The tax administration's audit macros: strategic use, error detection and forensic counter-calculation

What it covers

Auditors base estimates on internal audit macros, time-series comparisons and yield calculations — methods with assumptions of their own and weaknesses of their own. The seminar shows how these calculation routines are built and how their assumptions can be examined and, where they do not hold, rebutted. It covers gross mark-ups, modal-value and chi-squared analyses, the soundness of the underlying data, and case studies from an ice cream parlour, a pizzeria and a mixed business. Participants learn to evidence errors in a calculation, build a counter-calculation of their own and document it so that it holds up in tax court proceedings.

Programme

1. Introduction to audit macros. Structure, purpose and operation of the official calculation routines, and the limits of what they can show.
2. Sources of error and weaknesses. Shortcomings in data capture, for instance in code allocation and quantity determination, based on anonymised cases.
3. Forensic counter-calculation. Producing more precise calculations, retracing flawed audit results, meeting the duty to cooperate.
4. Time-series comparison and yield calculation. The tax administration's tables, gross profit mark-ups, case studies from hospitality and mixed businesses.
5. Digital number analysis. Modal-value and chi-squared analyses, monitoring methods, data hygiene.
6. Prevention and legal safeguards. Risk management, preparing for fiscal court proceedings, questions of the burden of proof.

Who it is for

• Tax advisers, auditors, accounting specialists
• Lawyers specialising in tax and commercial law
• Business owners in hospitality and retail
• Specialist auditors, expert witnesses and firm staff

What you will be able to do

• Follow the structure and workings of the tax administration’s audit macros
• Place time-series comparison, yield calculation and gross mark-up in the audit
• Identify sources of error in data capture, code allocation and quantity determination
• Read modal-value and chi-squared analyses correctly and refute unfounded suspicions
• Name the limits of what an official calculation can show
• Build and document a robust counter-calculation of your own
• Place the duty to cooperate and know what it means for the evidence
• Build a line of proof that carries in tax court proceedings
• Evidence errors in a calculation rather than merely disputing them

„Understand the audit macros, and you understand how the auditor thinks. Understand how the auditor thinks, and you can shape the proceedings."

Luca Gobbo

Speaker at
TeleTax · FSB GmbH Fachinstitut für Steuerrecht und Betriebswirtschaft · Kölner AnwaltVerein e.V.

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