Things got off to a bad start: When a good 100,000 German house and apartment owners decided to submit their property tax returns at the beginning of July, suddenly nothing worked anymore.

The digital tax portal Elster briefly collapsed due to the large number of visitors.

The authorities should have been prepared for this.

After all, it was the tax offices that asked millions of house and apartment owners to submit their property data between the beginning of July and the end of October.

The fact that a good 100,000 citizens tried it at the same time should not have surprised anyone given the magnitude of the project, after all around 35 million properties are involved.

Ralph Bollman

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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Dennis Kremer

Editor in the “Value” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The effort has to do with the Federal Constitutional Court.

In 2018, the judges declared the old method of calculating property tax to be unconstitutional.

In the west it was based on property values ​​from 1964, in the east even on values ​​from 1935. Even without a great deal of specialist knowledge, it quickly becomes clear that it was no longer possible to work with this.

The anger is great

Nevertheless, the anger is great now.

Many citizens vent their anger on the Internet.

Some describe how they despair at the Elster portal, others have trouble collecting the required data.

Still others do not understand what to enter in certain places in the declaration.

The taxpayers' association reports a constant number of calls on the subject, even during the holiday season.

It is made even more complicated by the fact that not all federal states follow a uniform model.

Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Hamburg use an opening clause and do not follow the federal model.

But even with the latter, there are minor differences between the countries.

In the meantime, many of the countries have improved because of the criticism of the citizens.

They have set up their own hotlines, produced explanatory videos and set up special websites.

But the initial enthusiasm of the citizens to deal with the unpleasant topic has disappeared.

This shows a survey by the FAS in all 16 federal states.

The return has so far been so low that the question arises as to whether the whole campaign is in danger of failing.

Because nationwide, just ten percent of the expected declarations have been received electronically.

With a view to the deadline, it is almost half-time.

In most federal states, people are still relaxed.

It is understandable that, in view of the summer and holiday season, many taxpayers take advantage of the deadline, writes the Hamburg tax authorities, for example.

Plain text can be heard from other state ministries.

It says from Thuringia: "The rate of declarations received of 7.4 percent by August 14 is not satisfactory."

It is true that the figures from the individual countries cannot be fully compared, as some also include paper declarations.

Many, in turn, include property tax returns for agricultural land.

Deadlines also vary slightly.

Overall, however, a clear picture emerges: the number of deliveries is low everywhere, and in eastern Germany it is significantly lower than in the west.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is at the bottom of the list with a tax rate of 4.2 percent, while the people of Brandenburg are having a similarly difficult time with 5.2 percent.

Berlin manages 6.7 percent, Saxony comes to 7.6 percent and Saxony-Anhalt to 8.9 percent.