blob: 51c32f28d1a6322e2090ff47a23172591e3c07a8 (
plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
|
title: Tax Offices assign Personal Identification Numbers
date: 2008-08-12 00:00:00
updated: 2009-11-07 23:15:04
author: frankro
tags: update, steueridentifikationsnummer
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).
|
