CITY, COUNTRY – An open letter from a foreign taxpayer has raised sharp concerns about language barriers and technical flaws in a national online tax portal aimed at non-citizens.
Foreign taxpayers describe rising frustration
In a detailed letter to a newspaper, a self-described “concerned and frustrated taxpayer” said they had followed recent developments on tax obligations for foreign residents with “growing despair”. The author stressed that it was an internationally accepted principle that people who lived permanently in a country should contribute fairly through taxes.
At the same time, the writer argued that the digital implementation of these obligations had become an “absolute catastrophe”. According to the account, the current system did not encourage cooperation but instead made it “de facto impossible” through major technical and linguistic barriers.
The letter targeted a tax portal that explicitly addressed foreign taxpayers but allegedly lacked any English-language interface. In a globally connected world where governments competed for international professionals, investors and retirees, the author described it as incomprehensible that essential bureaucratic processes were available only in the national language.
Language-only interface forces improvised workarounds
The taxpayer said the reality at home in front of the computer involved handling several devices at once. They reportedly sat at a laptop with the actual tax form open, while using a smartphone with a camera translation app as a kind of digital magnifying glass just to understand which data belonged in which field.
Every step, whether entering the address, federal state or city, turned into a time-consuming guessing game, the letter said. Users scrolled through long dropdown menus in an unfamiliar script, constantly afraid of accidentally entering incorrect information that might later have legal consequences.
According to the author, the language barrier was only the start of a chain of design errors in the portal’s user guidance. A “particularly absurd example” cited in the letter was the mandatory query of a village number when entering an address.
Mandatory village number blocks urban users
The writer pointed out that many foreigners lived in urban areas and occupied condominiums or modern apartment complexes. These types of housing simply did not have a village number, they wrote.
Despite this, the digital system was described as so rigidly programmed that it did not accept this field being left blank. Attempts to proceed without the entry reportedly caused the program to freeze or refuse to move to the next step.
Only through laborious trial and error did some users discover they could enter the number “1” as a placeholder to “outsmart” the form, the letter stated. For the author, such programming dead ends reflected a serious lack of practical testing and understanding of users’ real-life situations.
Security rules clash with password best practice
Once the data-entry hurdles were cleared, a further test awaited in the field of IT security, according to the account. The portal asked users to create a secure password, but when they followed standard security practice and used complex strings of characters, the system often rejected these passwords “for inexplicable reasons”.
Even more serious, the letter claimed, was the blocking of basic functions such as copy and paste. Anyone using a password manager, which cybersecurity experts strongly recommended, could not simply transfer their generated password into their secure archive.
As a result, users were forced either to retype passwords or opt for less secure alternatives, the taxpayer argued. This, they wrote, rendered the entire security concept absurd and undermined modern data-protection advice.
Hyphens in ID numbers trigger log-in failures
According to the letter, frustration peaked at the actual log-in process. Users entered their official tax identification number along with the painstakingly created password, only to receive a brief error message stating that the entries were incorrect.
Even after repeatedly resetting and changing the password, access reportedly remained blocked. The solution to this puzzle was described as “banal yet annoying” and documented nowhere: the tax identification number appeared with hyphens on official documents, but the digital system accepted it only if those hyphens were removed manually.
The author argued that a single line of code to format the input automatically would solve the issue. Instead, they claimed, users were left believing they had forgotten their credentials or that their accounts were locked.
From cooperation to resignation
At this point, the measure was “full” for many affected people, the taxpayer wrote, explicitly including themselves. In their view, if a public authority wanted to collect money, it had to provide appropriate, functioning tools.
The current state of the portal led to complete resignation, the letter said. Some users reached a point where they were inclined to abandon their efforts and wait for the authorities to become active on their own initiative.
According to the writer, this attitude did not stem from bad intentions or a desire to evade taxes. Instead, they described it as the direct result of an unacceptable digital infrastructure that made compliance disproportionately difficult.
Privacy concerns over reliance on local helpers
Foreigners were often advised in such situations to simply seek help from local acquaintances or partners, the letter noted. The author called this suggestion “highly problematic”, pointing out that financial matters and tax data counted among the most sensitive personal information.
They argued that even in a partnership, people might not want to disclose their complete income and wealth situation without filters. This applied even more to single individuals who were entirely on their own, the taxpayer wrote.
According to the letter, it was a basic right to handle official matters independently, discreetly and without dependence on third parties. A tax system, they said, should not be built on the assumption that taxpayers must rely on the goodwill and language skills of neighbours or partners to meet their legal obligations.
Call for investigation and public feedback
The writer addressed their appeal to the newspaper’s editorial team, asking it to take up the topic journalistically and examine whether the responsible bodies planned improvements. They also posed a question to other readers: was this experience unique, or had others faced similar problems or found ways through the “digital jungle” without abandoning principles of data protection and independence?
The taxpayer said they were very interested in a constructive exchange of experiences.
In an editorial note, the newspaper thanked the author for the detailed insight into the current challenges of digital tax filing. The newsroom said the described technical and linguistic barriers matched reports it had received more frequently in recent weeks.
“We will take this issue as an opportunity to ask the responsible authorities whether adjustments to the user interface and usability for foreign taxpayers are planned.”
said the editorial team.
The editors also invited readers to share their own experiences and possible solutions to the problem. They indicated an intention to follow up on the usability of the tax portal as part of their ongoing coverage.