Digital trade tax assessment notice

In its previous paper form, the trade tax assessment notice meant a high compliance cost for many companies. With the digital trade tax assessment notice, this process can now be optimized so that taxpayers and their tax offices can process the notices automatically. However, companies are not the only ones to benefit from an electronically transmitted tax assessment. It also offers local authorities an opportunity to improve processes and procedures and make them more efficient, freeing up personnel capacity that is needed elsewhere.

Live since April 2023 - Digital trade tax assessment notice delivery request

The digital trade tax assessment notice was launched in April 2023. Since then, around 3.9 million companies and over 50,000 tax consultancies and group tax departments in Germany have been able to indicate directly when submitting their trade tax return whether they wish to receive their trade tax assessment in digital form. To do this, they simply have to select the so-called "electronic delivery request" in "Mein ELSTER", the online portal of the tax authorities. Once the technical requirements have been met at the relevant local authority, the trade tax assessment notice will then be sent online to the "Mein Unternehmskonto" mailbox, the uniform nationwide user account for companies.

The digital trade tax assessment is possible for trade tax returns from the 2022 tax period onwards.

ELSTER transfer for municipalities

Interested local authorities can use the concepts presented here free of charge and introduce the digital trade tax assessment to their own systems. The necessary connection to ELSTER Transfer can potentially also be used for the digital processing of other municipal taxes. ELSTER-Transfer is a service offered by ELSTER to municipalities (and other organizations) to benefit from the digitalization of tax administration. It is used to exchange data with the tax authorities. Put simply, it is a digital letter carrier that makes tax information available digitally. This allows tax assessments to be sent to taxpayers' digital mailboxes - automatically, uniformly and securely.

A project of the Online Access Act

The Online Access Act (OZG) stipulates that online access must be provided for all administrative services. This also includes the so-called feedback channel, i.e. the feedback that companies receive regarding an administrative act. In the case of trade tax, this is the trade tax assessment notice. Users of an Online Service are thus given the option of selecting electronic notification of official information and notices.

The aim of the digital trade tax assessment notice project is to introduce a legally compliant, digital and both human- and machine-readable notice. The project aims to establish the provision of trade tax assessments in electronic form across Germany without media discontinuity. The solution is based on the tried-and-tested ELSTER infrastructure consisting of Mein ELSTER, ERiC and ELSTER-Transfer and aims to connect the municipalities to the data exchange with the tax offices across the board.

Documents

Links

• Technical information such as interface descriptions of the data records from the tax authorities to the municipalities, or specifications and specifications of the digital trade tax assessment notice (from the municipalities to the companies) can be found on the page w ww.esteuer.de
  

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To the main page of ELSTER-Transfer.