Electronic tax return despite security concerns

Even those who have security concerns about electronic tax returns have no choice but to submit them electronically.

The obligation to submit tax returns in electronic form cannot be circumvented even with security concerns. One engineer cited, among other things, the revelations of Edward Snowden and also distrusted the ELSTER software of the tax authorities. But the Baden-Württemberg Fiscal Court did not accept these objections. The ELSTER software had been certified by the Federal Office for Information Security. In addition, the engineer could reasonably be expected to prevent the spying on his data that he feared by using commercially available security software.