Yesterday, the German finance ministry launched an Internet portal that allows the electronic filing of income tax declarations. The project, named "Elster" (an acronym for electronic tax return), will initially be available in five states, but is planned to be available in the whole country by 1 January 2006. This service is aimed at citizens as well as companies, which now can submit tax returns and annual VAT returns electronically. Only a couple of weeks ago (see EuroView Daily, September 16), we pointed out that Germany was only 18th in Capgemini's 2005 ranking of how well 28 European States delivered on basic e-government services. In contrast to the fiscus project, which aimed at creating a common application suite for all tax offices, the Elster project has been running successfully for six years, although the official launch was much later. The difference here is that Elster is developing something new from scratch, whereas fiscus failed to overcome IT structures that have been implemented in each individual state for decades.
A total of over 29m tax returns have been transmitted to date with Elster; for 2003 alone, there were more than 10m. Topping the list were wages tax returns. With further developments planned - Elster will incorporate further tax-relevant data, such as capital yields taxes, capital-formation benefits, and the necessary annexes to the tax declaration (balance sheets, profit and loss statements) - we see this as a good step towards snatching a better position in next year's e-government ranking.
Autor: Cornelia Wels-Maug
Quelle: Ovum, 29.09.2005
