Resolution of the Federal Council: the tax identification number becomes a citizen number

Despite massive criticism from data protectionists, the tax ID should become a kind of citizen number. This allows personal data to be used by all authorities, but only after consent.

The tax identification number becomes a kind of citizen number that allows an authority to access existing data about a person in another authority. This stems from a decision of the Federal Council. However, this only applies if the interested party so wishes and expressly accepts.

The corresponding law had previously received massive criticism from data protectionists and the opposition in the Bundestag. It is intended to reduce bureaucratic effort by unequivocally identifying citizens.

Multiple submissions should be avoided

The so-called Registry Modernization Law also aims to allow more administrative processes to be carried out online. For this, the tax identification number of the person concerned is also stored in about 50 places, for example in the population register, in the driver’s license register and in the gun register, as well as in pension and of health.

The pandemic has shown how urgently Germany needs the digitization of the administration, said the parliamentary secretary of state in the Federal Interior Ministry, Günter Krings. The Federal Ministry of the Interior, which drafted the bill, wants to avoid in the future that the same data has to be obtained multiple times from different authorities or that identical documents, for example the birth certificate, have to be presented more than once.

FDP says the law is highly questionable

However, only the access rights need to be changed; central storage of documents is not provided. Citizens who have consented to the procedure can use the secure access, the so-called data booth, to see for themselves which authorities have exchanged what data with them.

The digital policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group, Manuel Höferlin, described the use of tax identification as a uniform personal identifier as highly constitutionally questionable. Federal Data Protection Commissioner Ulrich Kelber also criticized the decision. The intersectoral use of such a label creates an “excessive risk of cataloging the personality.”