UPDATE 1-Still hope for German-Swiss tax evader deal -Schaeuble

(Adds detail, background, quotes, SPD reaction)

(Reuters) - A deal between Germany and Switzerland to crack down on tax evaders is imperiled by an opposition party that says it does not go far enough, but German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday he still hopes to get it approved.

Switzerland and Germany struck a deal in April to levy taxes on the assets that Germans have stashed in Swiss accounts to avoid the taxman but the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) party has said it will block the plan in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, where the governing centre-right coalition has no majority.

The existence of the Swiss accounts has caused an uproar in Germany where the SPD-ruled state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous, has purchased CD discs containing bank data from whistleblowers to track down tax evaders who attempt to move their money before the deal comes into effect, planned for early next year.

Last weekend, senior SPD member Joachim Poss said his party would scupper the tax deal regardless of whether Switzerland makes concessions to allow back-dated inquiries, but Schaeuble said he thinks the deal with the Swiss is as good as it can get.

"I hope very much that we still manage to get it ratified," Schaeuble said as he opened a debate on Germany's 2013 budget in the Bundestag lower house.

"We have an agreement with Switzerland which means that in the future we will treat assets in Switzerland like those in Germany - you cannot reasonably want any more than that."

Until now, one of the SPD's criticisms has been that, as it stands, the pact would allow people to evade taxes by taking their money out of Switzerland before the deal takes effect.

DEAL RENEGOTIATED ONCE BEFORE

The Swiss and German governments have already renegotiated the deal once, deciding in April to raise the retroactive levy on German funds held in Swiss bank accounts in an attempt to placate the SPD.

"Even in (the agreement's) renegotiated form, tax evaders are still protected and shrouded by anonymity," the SPD's Poss told the Bundestag during Tuesday's debate.

"They can still transfer money that has not been taxed to Switzerland and that, Mr Finance Minister, is a provocation of honest taxpayers," he said.

German media have accused Swiss banks of telling German clients to shift money to Singapore to avoid taxation.

Schaeuble said that without the deal, there would be nothing to prevent money from "sneaking out" of Switzerland.

Norbert Barthle, the budget expert for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), urged the SPD to ensure that their state premiers did not block the deal.

"Then we would have more tax revenues - experts say around 10 billion (euros) ($12.85 billion), which we could rake in immediately and we would use that to reduce net borrowing," said Barthle.
Germans hold an estimated 150 billion euros in Swiss accounts.

Banking secrecy is key to Switzerland's $2 trillion offshore wealth management industry. It has refused an automatic exchange of information on account holders and is pursuing instead the strategy of a withholding tax to preserve secrecy. ($1 = 0.7821 euros) (Reporting by Michelle Martin, Sarah Marsh and Alexandra Hudson; Writing by Michelle Martin, editing by Gareth Jones and Michael Roddy)