Malfunction in the portal – what to do?

There are currently major problems with the “Elster” control platform. It is therefore not possible for many users to register on the platform or to make entries. The reason for the disruption is a high rush to the portal.

The rush is caused by the property tax reform. As a result, many house and apartment owners try to submit their information for the tax return online at the same time.

Problems with Elster: Wait and try again later

On the website of the Elster portal is it[called:

“Due to the enormous interest in the forms for the property tax reform, there are currently restrictions on availability.“

They promise to fix the problem quickly in order to “make the usual quality available as soon as possible”. It is still unclear how long the access problems at Elster will last. The problem is not browser related. So it doesn’t help much to use another program. Even common solutions such as deleting the browser cache and cookies are less helpful in this case.

If you urgently want to deal with tax matters, you should move your visit to the tax platform to late in the evening or early in the morning, i.e. times when fewer visitors try to use the service at the same time.

Elster does not work: That is behind the problems

Some users are passing the time until everything is back to normal on Twitter:

The reason for the high rush is the property tax reform. According to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, the property tax must be recalculated, which means that apartment and house owners have been by October 31 at the latest submit an updated tax return. For this purpose, various data on the property, such as the living space, the standard land value and the year of construction, must be given in the declaration. Around 36 million properties are affected and have to be recalculated.

The information you need to provide depends on the state. For owners, the new calculation results in deviations in the three to four-digit euro range. The declaration can only be made online via the Elster portal, which is currently leading to a massive rush and the associated service failures.