Last year, customs investigators discovered undeclared work with financial losses of around 615 million euros. This involves unpaid social security contributions and taxes, but also unpaid minimum wages and wrongly received social benefits. “There is still too much and too often undeclared work going on in Germany,” said Finance Minister Christian Lindner during a mission by inspectors in Berlin.
“Clandestine work and illegal employment are a problem, not only for the state and its income, but especially for fair merchants, honest merchants,” emphasized the FDP politician. Customs protects these entrepreneurs from those who want to fraudulently gain competitive advantages.
Lindner, wearing a white construction helmet and customs jacket, found out about cross-border cooperation between the authorities in the EU during the operation of the financial control agency for undeclared work. According to customs, checks like the one on Monday at a construction site in the former Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz take place almost every day nationwide, even without specific suspicion – especially in the construction industry, in the catering industry, in the hotel industry and in the transport industry. If necessary, data from the pension insurance and the central register of foreigners can be queried and identities can be checked on site. According to customs, more cases of document forgery have recently been discovered.
“Everyone needs to know that these tests serve the purpose of guaranteeing the fairness of competition in the social market economy,” emphasized Lindner. At the beginning of the year, experts assumed that undeclared work would decrease as a result of the increase in citizen’s benefit – because fewer people who received citizen’s benefit would then feel the need to earn money illegally on the side. There is no information about this yet, said Lindner. In general, he would like to see closer cooperation with the Federal Employment Agency on the subject of undeclared work.