Goldman Helped Germans Lower Tax Payments With Fund, Welt Says

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. helped wealthy clients avoid millions of euros in taxes to Germany by offering them a fixed-income fund that generated hypothetical losses, newspaper Die Welt reported, without saying where it got the information.

The strategy, which courts have yet to determine was legal or not, relied on investments structured in Luxembourg, the newspaper said. The maneuver was designed to let customers book losses under higher income-tax rates before the government introduced a flat withholding tax of 25 percent on capital gains in 2009, the paper said. 

A spokeswoman for the bank said it doesn’t comment on advice it provides to customers, the newspaper said. A New York-based spokesman declined to comment when reached by Bloomberg, citing client confidentiality.

--With assistance from Dakin Campbell To contact the reporter on this story: David Scheer in Seattle at dscheer@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net, Sylvia Wier