Tax secrecy

What it means

Tax secrecy is the duty of confidentiality over everything the tax office learns about a taxpayer while administering tax. It binds the staff of the Financial Administration, the specialists it brings in, and anyone to whom the data was lawfully passed.

It is neither trade secrecy nor data protection under the GDPR. The duty comes from the Tax Code and covers the data whether the taxpayer is a company or an individual.

Secrecy protects the tax subject from third parties, not from itself. The subject may inspect its own file and deals with its own data freely: showing a bank its return or a certificate of no arrears needs no consent from the office, and the office does not stand in the way.

How it works in practice

The Act carves some information out, and the Financial Administration publishes it: lists of registered VAT payers, lists of debtors and the tax reliability index. Everything else goes only to the bodies the Act names.

An accountant or adviser is not an authorised person by default. Before the tax administrator tells them anything, a valid power of attorney wide enough for that agenda has to be on file.

When a company is sold or goes through a buyer’s due diligence, the office tells the buyer nothing. The tax history therefore comes from the seller: it requests a certificate of arrears, opens up the returns filed and the audit reports, and we prepare them with the client so the buyer sees the full picture.

What to watch out for

When an agenda is handed over, the power of attorney is what gets forgotten. The office tells the new accountant nothing, the request sits in the mailbox of the previous one, and the clock runs: the penalty grows out of a formality, not out of tax.

The carve-out from secrecy works against the company too. Once its arrears pass the statutory threshold, its name appears on the public list of debtors that banks and suppliers check before signing. One forgotten advance is enough to put the company in a needlessly weak position when it applies for a loan.