The tax chatbot provides you with answers to many tax-related questions at any time, competently and seriously.
It is currently still in the pilot stage. It is constantly learning, but it cannot and must not provide you with tax advice.
The tax chatbot is based on technologies from third-party providers outside the tax administration. These thus have access to your data entered in the chat history. Therefore, do not enter any personal data (e.g. name, age, tax/ID number, etc.). The tax chatbot does not need this data.
For further explanation, please see the privacy statement. Before launching, you must provide your consent to the privacy policy.
Publisher:
Financial administrations of the federal states and the federal government, represented by the IT steering group.
Contact person for the tax chatbot
Sarah Grizelj
Oberfinanzdirektion Karlsruhe
Moltkestraße 50
76133 Karlsruhe
Phone: 0721/926-0
Fax: 0721/926-2725
Email: poststelle@ofdka.bwl.de
1. Data protection at a glance
Data processing on this website is carried out by the website operator. You can find the operator's contact details in the legal notice of this website. You have the right to obtain information about the origin, recipient and purpose of your stored personal data. You also have the right to request the correction, blocking or deletion of this data. If you have any further questions on the subject of data protection, please contact the data protection officer at Datenschutz@ofdka.bwl.de.
2. General notes and mandatory information
2.1. Data protection
We take the protection of your personal data very seriously. We treat your personal data confidentially and in accordance with the statutory data protection regulations and this privacy policy. Personal data is data that can be used to identify you personally (name, address, tax number, ID number, etc.). However, the tax chatbot does not require you to enter such data. Therefore, please do not enter such data.
You have the following rights.
2.2. Right to data portability
You have the right to have data that we process automatically on the basis of your consent handed over to you or to a third party in a commonly used, machine-readable format. If you request the direct transfer of the data to another controller, this will only take place if it is technically feasible.
2.3. Information, revocation, deletion
You have the right to obtain information about your stored personal data informally and without justification. This also applies to its origin and recipient as well as the purpose of storage. You will receive this information free of charge. Information about the stored data can be obtained from the data protection officer, who can be contacted at Datenschutz@ofdka.bwl.de.
In addition, you have the right to correct incorrect data, restrict processing and delete your personal data. In the event of the assumption of unlawful data processing, you can lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority at any time. You can also revoke your consent, generally with effect for the future.
Users can object to the future processing of their personal data in accordance with the legal requirements.
The data stored by our third-party provider will be deleted after 30 days, provided that deletion does not conflict with any statutory retention obligations. In these cases, processing will be restricted. This means that the data is blocked and not processed for other purposes.
2.4. Security measures
We take organizational, contractual and technical security measures in accordance with the state of the art to ensure that the provisions of data protection laws are complied with and to protect the data processed by us against accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorized persons. The security measures include, in particular, the encrypted transmission of data between your browser and our server. The tax chatbot uses SSL or TLS encryption to protect the transmission of confidential content, such as requests that you send to us as the site operator. You can recognize an encrypted connection by the fact that the address line of the browser changes from "http://" to "https://" and by the lock symbol in your browser line. If SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data you transmit to us cannot be read by third parties.
3. Data collection
The information you enter in the chat window is processed in a cloud system operated by IBM Deutschland GmbH. This serves to answer your questions. If you select a language other than "German", the automated translation service of DeepL GmbH will be used for the translation. Your entries and their translations will not be stored by DeepL GmbH and will only be used to the extent that this is necessary for the creation of the translation. The data processing is carried out in the context of a task carried out in the public interest (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. e GDPR).
Your conversation with the chatbot is stored in encrypted form for 30 days in the form of conversation data in a cloud system operated by IBM Deutschland GmbH. This storage serves to analyze the chat history to improve the response quality of the chatbot.
The tax chatbot is an information service for citizens about current tax law in Germany. It is provided by the states and the federal government, represented by the IT steering group.
In the course of improving the citizen service of the tax offices, emerging citizen concerns and the experiences of tax office employees based on them as well as research by citizens on the tax offices' websites (e.g. FAQ) were evaluated on a random basis. It was found that only 20% of citizens' concerns relate to general (technical) issues. These are mainly organizational questions (e.g. opening hours of the tax office) as well as technical concerns in the areas of income tax, ELStAM and ELSTER. However, of the remaining 80%, which concern the individual tax case, about 60% can be answered without recourse to the data of the tax authorities. These are simple organizational and legal questions that can be answered directly after a query, if necessary (e.g., "By when do I have to file a tax return?" or "Do I have to file a tax return?"; "Which tax office is responsible for me?"). These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily by FAQs, as citizens would not be able to understand an abstract answer with different case constellations. The citizens are not able to subsume the facts that would be relevant to their answer. However, simple, abstract queries can answer such citizen concerns in a short and easily understandable way. Only 20% of the questions concerning the individual tax case require an identity check and recourse to the data of the tax administration (e.g. "Has my tax return been received?").
Accordingly, it was decided that citizens should be able to turn to a central office of the tax administration with their questions, the answers to which can be provided without recourse to the data of the tax administration, in order to receive general and specific tax information or information on their questions in a timely manner - the tax chatbot. The target group of the tax chatbot is primarily citizens with their concerns as private individuals. The tax chatbot should answer these concerns automatically and relieve the tax offices in this respect. It does not provide tax advice.
Unlike search engines on the Internet, the tax chatbot answers citizens' questions with currently valid and correct answers. Citizens receive their information first-hand, directly from their tax administration and thus from a reputable source. In doing so, it is better than FAQ, as it can directly query the existence of each factual element of the tax offense by asking questions and provide precise information as an answer. Unlike a FAQ, which has to explain every case variant, the tax chatbot can explain only the one relevant case variant as a final answer in a short and easy-to-understand way - in the best case with "yes" or "no".
Through the tax chatbot, citizens now have the opportunity to obtain information about tax regulations beyond the opening hours and telephone accessibility of the tax offices. As a modern, digitally accessible medium, the tax chatbot is available on the web around the clock, seven days a week.
The chatbot speaks not only German, but also English and French to enable taxpayers from all over the world to find out about German tax law.