A prank website named 24Aktuelles published a hoax article titled "Ab Januar 2018: die Tattoo-Steuer kommt" (translation: "Coming In January 2018: The Tattoo-tax"). The article reads in part:
Berlin. Wie heute im Bundestag einstimmig beschlossen wurde, wird in Deutschland ab dem 1. Januar 2018 eine Steuer auf Tätowierungen erhoben. 623 der insgesamt 630 Parlamentarier waren zur Abstimmung gekommen. Insgesamt votierten 393 Parlamentarier mit Ja für die Besteuerung von Tattoos. 226 stimmten mit Nein, vier Abgeordnete enthielten sich ihrer Stimme.
Translated this works out to:
Berlin. As today unanimously decided in the Bundestag, a tax on tattoos will be levied in Germany from 1 January 2018. 623 of the total of 630 parliamentarians had voted. A total of 393 parliamentarians voted yes for the taxation of tattoos. 226 voted no, four deputies abstained.
Of course the story is complete nonsense. The site www.24aktuelles.com is a prank website where users can submit their own headline, description and photo to create realistic looking prank news articles. It belongs to the same network as React365:
Users don't even need to upload their own image, there is a built-in search function that will pull an appropriate image from Google image search.
The story wasn't getting much traffic initially but a few hours ago it went viral as the Trendolizer graph at the end of this article demonstrate. If you seen any German friends with tattoos on their way to their accountants to ask for more information, please stop them and send them this article. Nobody likes being fooled by "Falsches News".
