By the end of 2017, the annual accounts for the 2016 financial year must be submitted in electronic form to the Federal Gazette to be submitted. Micro-enterprises may file their balance sheet. When disclosing the annual accounts for the 2016 financial year, the new provisions of the Act Implementing the Accounting Directive (BilRUG) must be observed for the first time.
Please note the deadline for disclosure
In addition to preparing the annual accounts, many companies are also required to publish them in the Federal Gazette. In the case of micro-enterprises, at least the balance sheet must be filed with the Companies Register for public access.
The Federal Office of Justice is responsible for conducting administrative fine proceedings against those companies that fail to fulfil their disclosure obligations, or fail to do so in a timely manner. As a result, the culture of disclosure in Germany has now improved significantly. Whereas previously only around 10 per cent of companies subject to disclosure requirements met their obligations, today over 90 per cent of the companies concerned publish their annual accounts.
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Heinz-Josef Friehe, President of the Federal Office of Justice, welcomes this development. Unfortunately, however, Mr Friehe notes that a considerable number of companies still fail to comply with the legal obligation to disclose their annual accounts, or do so only after the deadline. „Every year, I view the disclosure rate with mixed feelings. Despite the high disclosure rate, the Federal Office of Justice has had to initiate around 175,000 administrative fine proceedings in 2017 against companies that failed to disclose their annual accounts for the 2015 financial year by the end of 2016, as required.“
Key new regulations
When disclosing annual accounts for financial years beginning after 31 December 2015, important new provisions of the Accounting Directive Implementation Act (BilRUG) Please note. In particular, the disclosure obligation will in future apply to the annual accounts that have been adopted or approved; the previous option of submitting the annual accounts to the operator of the Federal Gazette before they have been adopted or approved, whilst still meeting the deadline, no longer applies.
For further information, please refer to the relevant sections on the website of the Federal Office of Justice.
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