Update on German bureaucracy, or Mitteilungsverordnung hooray!

I've recently posted about the requirement of a German tax id for all reimbursements even of foreign seminar guests, or more precisely, about my frustration thereof. In the meantime I've been talking to colleagues, our faculty administration, read up some legalese texts, and last but not least contacted friends induced in the relevant higher Bavarian mysteries for their opinion and knowledge. The result is interesting, and here's a summary of it.

First of all, while the federal Mitteilungsverordnung ("notification regulation") has not changed recently, it will change as of 1 January 2025 (most relevant, its §8). And indeed it then requires electronic transmission of the notifications and that every payment notification is accompanied by the German tax id of the recipient. Since payments during 2024 are reported beginning of 2025, that change affects us already now. What has not changed is the "Bagatellgrenze", i.e., the fact that payments below 1500,- € per person and year do not require any payment notification and thus also no tax id.

Second, as proposed by the State of Bavaria, the Bundesrat (our second chamber of parliament that represents the states) has requested to raise the "Bagatellgrenze" to 3000,- € per person and year, since even the higher mysteries are of the opinion that the current situation is not really productive (the number was initially fixed as 3000,- DM in 1993 and then converted to 1500,- € ... now how much inflation did we have in the meantime?). The federal government is assessing the situation.

Third, I got the comment that University of Regensburg seems to hand in quite some unnecessary (because of the "Bagatellgrenze") payment notifications. Which is somewhat unsurprising since our central administration (not the Physics department) insists on sending a record of every payment, not just the ones above 1500,- € per person and year. Lovely. #Provinzuniversität #UniversitätRegensburg

At the moment our foreign guests get the application form for the German tax id during their visit together with the remaining reimbursement forms, and need to hand in a passport copy with it. The generated tax id is directly sent to us; once it has arrived the normal reimbursement process is started. Things could be worse. Still, first, the process delays the reimbursement (potentially by weeks, depending on the load of our local tax office), second, requiring all international guests to leave a passport copy and file for a German tax id just to get their plane tickets paid is borderline...