2023-08-30 18:49:07
It’s one of the absurdities of an overnight stay in a hotel: while booking and payment have long been digital, all guests have to queue up at the reception desk to sign a piece of paper, the registration form. This is what the Federal Registration Act provides for. The hotelier is then obliged to keep each form safe for one year.
The reason for the signature sounds like a joke: thanks to the slip, security authorities should not only be able to compare the name, date of birth and address of a guest, but also take fingerprints from the registration forms. In practice, this happened exactly once in ten years, as the federal government explained in 2019 when asked by the FDP.
That’s enough of that. The registration forms will be abolished, at least for German citizens. This is how it is in the cornerstones of another bureaucracy relief law (BEG IV), which was decided by the cabinet during the closed meeting in Meseberg and is to be converted into a concrete draft law in the coming months.
In other areas, too, paper consumption and the length of the shelves with folders are to be significantly reduced: In principle, it is intended that electronic writing will become the standard form. It starts with employment contracts and job references. Letters terminating a tenancy can also be photographed with a smartphone and sent electronically in the future.
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In the same way, landlords can provide their tenants with digital receipts for the utility bill. In the future, information about allergens, additives and flavorings will no longer have to be available in writing from the seller for food sold loose.
And where paper is still needed, it can at least be shredded faster than today. According to the plans, the retention periods for accounting documents under commercial and tax law will be reduced from ten to eight years.
Further measures to reduce bureaucracy
Overall, the federal government has identified 28 very specific points from the everyday life of companies and their customers where bureaucracy should now be pushed back. This is just the beginning, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Meseberg and promised: “We will continue to work on the topic.” Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) wants to continue to send his people to companies, as he said, to help the practitioners there to look over your shoulder.
The previous proposals for reducing bureaucracy do not come from the administration, but come from an online survey of associations, among other things. A total of 57 associations took part in the survey between January and March 2023, and 442 suggestions were received, according to the key issues paper.
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According to Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP), this will reduce the costs for citizens and businesses by 2.3 billion euros a year. It’s not just about saving paper and postage, it’s also about eliminating unnecessary work. Here, too, very concrete measures are involved.
The control process at airports – at check-in, baggage drop-off, boarding – should run “contactless, faster and more efficiently” as far as possible. The chip in new passports should help with this – provided the passengers agree to the reading of the data stored there.
Another example: the random verification of income from capital assets in the case of the basic pension. According to the eight-page paper, this control procedure is simply not necessary, it has been shown in practice that the information reported automatically by the tax authorities is sufficient. Therefore: away with it.
Reaction of the economy to attempts to reduce bureaucracy
The reaction of the economy to the concrete approaches is mixed. “The fact that the federal government has now singled out the abolition of hotel registration slips from our list of proposals for relief is an important step in the right direction,” said Dirk Binding from the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK).
The abolition of the registration form should not only apply to German guests. Business travelers and tourists with a foreign passport must also be waived from filling out the form as soon as possible.
“We expressly welcome the shortening of the commercial and tax retention periods,” said Hartmut Schwab, President of the Federal Chamber of Tax Advisors. Digitization in legal transactions is another good step towards reducing bureaucracy.
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“In the future, it should be possible in other cases for documents to only list the names of the relevant persons. Your handwritten signature is then no longer necessary,” said Schwab. The next step must be a “modern, self-managed digital identity” as the basis for secure, time-saving and media-free communication.
The trade is missing a real relief stimulus. “Even if it is a good but long-needed signal for craft businesses that the federal government is finally presenting concrete measures after two years of announcements and promises to reduce bureaucracy, the key issues paper that has been adopted falls well short of what is possible,” said Holger Schwannecke, Secretary General of the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH). From his point of view, the planned reduction in retention requirements and the review of information and documentation requirements should have gone much faster.
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