Tax administration portal Elster is overloaded

by time news

In Germany, millions of house, apartment and property owners have to submit a kind of second tax return from July to the end of October at the latest. That was the result of a judgment by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. As a rule, this declaration of property tax is made electronically via the Elster platform. Among other things, this includes data on the floor number, year of construction, living space and land value of the property.

At the weekend, however, this new regulation meant that Elster (Electronic Tax Return) was overwhelmed by the many inquiries. The website says: “Due to the enormous interest in the forms for the property tax reform, there are currently restrictions on availability. We are already working hard to be able to provide you with the quality you are used to as quickly as possible.” According to the information, the use of Mein ELSTER and the “ElsterSmart” app is also affected, “if the ElsterSmart app and Mein ELSTER are on different devices are used”.

The restrictions fell on little fertile ground on social networks: “Dear #Tax officeif you’re going to insist that I override the property tax #Elster SUBMIT, THEN MAKE SURE YOUR SERVERS ARE RUNNING! Once with professionals,” wrote one user. According to several users, the problem has existed since Thursday.

Depending on the federal state, more or less information may be required for the new regulation because the states use different calculation models. For apartment owners, it is usually a few hundred euros a year, for owners of larger apartment buildings it can also be four-digit amounts. The owners will probably not find out how much will ultimately be due until 2025, because the property tax value to be calculated from their data is only one component in the calculation of the property tax – and the municipalities can adjust their assessment rates and thus determine how much they have to pay .

Elster was started in 1996 as a project by the German tax administrations of all federal states and the federal government. It serves as a digital processing of the tax return or registration via the Internet. It is coordinated by the Bavarian State Office for Taxes in Munich.

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