From personal experience - having spent two years working for a (rare) German based startup - I can say this FT article about R&D jobs is right on the money. There is a strong incentive for companies to move expensive positions like R&D abroad because both the employer and the employee gain. I seem to recall that Infineon moved its entire RD to Austria. The reason being that in Austria R&D is taxed differently in such a way that the individual researchers can get tax credits and share in the results of their work directly. The company I worked for is seriously looking at doing the same thing. Since it is a 10 person company in itself this doesn't mean much. But it contains two or three of the better biochemical brains in Germany so Germany will lose not just the tax money but also the chance to benefit from these people in the future.
The fact that headline unemployment is above 5 million is just another nail in coffin. Sorry guys you need a Margaret Thatcher to slash all the social spending and to face down the unions. Germans can be creative btu right now their incentive is to be creative in tax matters rather than inproductve ones. For what it is worth I pay less tax in France than I did in Germany. Much less. And I get benefits from my tax money in ways that I failed to get in Germany. France, politically and economically, has a bunch of issues. But compared to Germany its is in rude health. This is not a good thing for Europe or eventually the rest of the world. Recall that the last time Germany had mass unemployment etc it produced a certain Adolf Hitler.