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+title: Tax Offices assign Personal Identification Numbers
+date: 2008-08-12 00:00:00 
+updated: 2009-04-18 19:12:41 
+author: frankro
+tags: update
+
+German citizens are receiving letters from their Tax Office containing their new 11-digit tax IDs. Germany-based civil rights organization Chaos Computer Club (CCC) considers this number to be an illegal personal identification number (Personenkennziffer) and fears its misuse by the authorities.
+
+<!-- TEASER_END -->
+
+From now on every citizen will receive a lifetime personal
+identification number in spite of such an ID having already been
+rejected by the German Federal Constitutional Court in the so-called
+"Mikrozensus" verdict of 1969. All old tax numbers will be replaced with
+the new ones by the end of the year while software updates necessary to
+handle them are currently being rolled out to Local Tax Offices.
+
+Established in 2003, the statutory basis for the tax ID was supposed to
+be used to improve tax compliance. However, the CCC sees widespread
+possibilities for misusing the tax ID, since specific provision has been
+made for further use by "regulations" in the German Tax Code.
+
+The CCC refers to [extensive information provided by the Humanistische
+Union (Humanist
+Union)](http://www.humanistische-union.de/themen/datenschutz/steuer_id/%0A)
+and advises all people concerned to get involved in the legal test case.
+
+In 2007, the tax ID [was awarded the Big Brother Award in the Politics
+category](http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2007/.pol/index_html?set_language=de).