There are many ways German Officialdom trolls its innocent citizenry, if not outright leaves them with the gnawing suspicion that they are, at any given moment, in the act of committing wrongdoing.
Elster is one of the best ways it accomplishes this. Elster is a mysterious place, which I have never quite figured out. Ostensibly, it is the way the taxpayer communicates and complies with tax authorities. There is a mailbox function, a litany of tax forms available for download, and theoretically even a section for directly filing your taxes — though I'm not sure if anyone actually does it that way.
My best guess is that Elster was Germany’s best effort at showing it, too, can do digital. Wikipedia says some form of it has been around since 1996. As of 2017, you haven’t even needed to swing by your local tax office anymore to dump an encyclopedia-size pile of receipts into the overnight mailbox to prove that, no really, you did spend €7.35 on stamps that year.
The only direct interaction I have ever had with Elster (which, if you’re interested, is an acronym for (El)ektronische (St)euer(er)klärung — or, electronic tax declaration) is limited:
Make an account.
Browse the platform, trying to make sense of it. And failing.
Request and download a security certificate, with which to file taxes via Elster-approved, third-party software.
Renew and re-download the security certificate.
The security certificate expires every few years. That’s when you get the email you see above. The message, however, does not instruct you to renew the certificate. Instead it informs you of the following:
You have registered for a personal certificate with your tax number. Your certificate is valid until 19.10.2023 at 11:56 am.
Instead of renewing the existing certificate, we recommend that you make a new registration now with your personal identification number (IdNr.)
No one is really sure what an IdNr. is, or what purpose it serves. You get it the first time you register with your local tax office and get your tax number, but it is not your tax number. Your tax number can change. Your IdNr. does not. I have had my IdNr. since shortly after I arrived here, in 2009. I have never once used it or been asked to input it. For anything, taxes or otherwise.
You will note that the tax authorities here are not saying that I can’t extend the security certificate. They are just recommending that I don’t. Why isn’t clear:
… it is only possible with an IdNr. to make use of new offers.
This is hardly a convincing argument, given how difficult it is identify, let alone make use of, any offer — new or old — the platform may have available for you. Nonetheless, you are left with the unsettling sense that this is an offer you can’t refuse. You don’t have to take their recommendation, but boy that’s some nice paperwork you’ve got there and it sure would be a shame if anything happened to it.
The email goes on to provide a lot of irrelevant information, in case you are any number of entities that you aren’t. What’s missing is any series of relevant instructions or guidance whatsoever on how to comply. You’re just, kinda, supposed to know, I guess?
As a result, the email lies dormant in your inbox for several weeks, looking for any excuse to be ignored. Finally, something even more distasteful comes along, making checking this to-do off your list seem tolerable by comparison.
You navigate to Elster, which looks something like my college’s student services web portal from the early 2000s. You log in and are swiftly confronted with a message:
Your personal certificate is set to expire. Would you like to extend it?
This is when you click, “Ja, bitte,” which prompts you to download a file, so you do. Six seconds later, you have a shiny new icon on your desktop, still with that new certificate smell.
And you’re done, no thanks to that email telling recommending you do something completely different and exponentially more complicated by starting over rather than just doing this perfectly fine, existing and easier thing.
Maybe one day I will be worthy of understanding what Elster is, but that day is not today. Until then, at least I can continue successfully submitting my tax forms. If I’m lucky, the tax office may even process them before I have to update the certificate file once again, in 2026.