7 ms·

That's a fascinating opinion, as I've never thought of Germany being a symbol of virtue. If anything, Germany is a paragon of bureaucracy. They have excellent e

That's a fascinating opinion, as I've never thought of Germany being a symbol of virtue. If anything, Germany is a paragon of bureaucracy. They have excellent engineering when used for good, but as history taught us, that's not always the case.

hnlmorg 4y ago
Your comment here sounds like it is referencing WW2, which is a little silly. Germany changed massively after that (I mean, it was literally two countries for a few decades). Governments can look very different from one decade to the next. So it doesn’t make sense to reference a war-time government from 80 years ago as an example of how a current government behaves.
petesergeant 4y ago
Maybe it's a Cold War propaganda relic? Growing up as an Englisher, history was divided into "Bad Germany" (1930-1945), and "Good (West) Germany", ever since, and the only real stereotype we had of the Germans was that they'd get up early to stake out spots by the pool on holiday. I have to assume that during the Cold War there was a great deal of propaganda highlighting the relative merits of West Germans.
- someweirdperson 4y ago
  Many regulations from before and even during the war are still valid today.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Yes. Most Nazis which held high-ranking posts before and during the war continued to do so in West Germany, under allied consent.
gumboza 4y ago
Yes I have a German friend who spends 3 months a year filing their tax situation. German paperwork is insane. And because a lot of the country is surprisingly technologically backwards, everything is on actual paper still. Takes me about an hour to do the same in the UK and half of that is trying to remember how to log in and do it.
- lnsru 4y ago
  It’s just not true. Elster is already electronic for couple years. If you know what are doing it takes 4 hours max. I recommend your friend to find good tax advisor if he/she is not capable to do it by himself/herself.
  - sveme 4y ago
    The uninformed bullshit by the person you replied to is the reason I typically don‘t comment on German topics anymore on HN. Alas, my Gell-Mann-Amnesia is strong and I read comments on other topics even though they are probably as little based on reality as these comments on Germany.
  - someweirdperson 4y ago
    Elster is an electronic version of paper forms. It requires redundant manual input of information that is present on different sub-sheets of the forms. Like the paper forms, it requires input of information that the government already has. Filing on paper doesn't take more time than filing through Elster. Also, it's not unlikely that the government is printing the electronically filed information in the traditional paper format to be able to process it the traditional way. (maybe not for taxes, but it's surely the case for some other processes.) But I agree that "3 months" is probably the time required to collect information, not the time needed to summarize the information for the government. Some banks take a couple of months to send the required yearly investment income/taxes-paid statement.
    - fabian2k 4y ago
      Some information can be entered automatically in Elster, e.g. the information submitted by your employer. For people with simple tax situations, e.g. regular employee and no additional complications filing the taxes is pretty straightforward. It can be a bit intimidating if you've never done it before, but almost all the information you need to fill out will be automatically provided. You need to get your bank/broker statements and enter them as well, but those tell you exactly in which line you need to put the values. There's certainly a lot of improvement possible, but for simple cases it's pretty easy already (if you've done it at least once before).
andrepd 4y ago
>They have excellent engineering when used for good, but as history taught us, that's not always the case. For what's worth, the "German efficiency in WWII" is mostly a myth.

hnlmorg 4y ago

Your comment here sounds like it is referencing WW2, which is a little silly. Germany changed massively after that (I mean, it was literally two countries for a few decades). Governments can look very different from one decade to the next. So it doesn’t make sense to reference a war-time government from 80 years ago as an example of how a current government behaves.

petesergeant 4y ago

Maybe it's a Cold War propaganda relic? Growing up as an Englisher, history was divided into "Bad Germany" (1930-1945), and "Good (West) Germany", ever since, and the only real stereotype we had of the Germans was that they'd get up early to stake out spots by the pool on holiday. I have to assume that during the Cold War there was a great deal of propaganda highlighting the relative merits of West Germans.

someweirdperson 4y ago
Many regulations from before and even during the war are still valid today.
andrepd 4y ago
Yes. Most Nazis which held high-ranking posts before and during the war continued to do so in West Germany, under allied consent.

gumboza 4y ago

Yes I have a German friend who spends 3 months a year filing their tax situation. German paperwork is insane. And because a lot of the country is surprisingly technologically backwards, everything is on actual paper still. Takes me about an hour to do the same in the UK and half of that is trying to remember how to log in and do it.

lnsru 4y ago
It’s just not true. Elster is already electronic for couple years. If you know what are doing it takes 4 hours max. I recommend your friend to find good tax advisor if he/she is not capable to do it by himself/herself.
- sveme 4y ago
  The uninformed bullshit by the person you replied to is the reason I typically don‘t comment on German topics anymore on HN. Alas, my Gell-Mann-Amnesia is strong and I read comments on other topics even though they are probably as little based on reality as these comments on Germany.
- someweirdperson 4y ago
  Elster is an electronic version of paper forms. It requires redundant manual input of information that is present on different sub-sheets of the forms. Like the paper forms, it requires input of information that the government already has. Filing on paper doesn't take more time than filing through Elster. Also, it's not unlikely that the government is printing the electronically filed information in the traditional paper format to be able to process it the traditional way. (maybe not for taxes, but it's surely the case for some other processes.) But I agree that "3 months" is probably the time required to collect information, not the time needed to summarize the information for the government. Some banks take a couple of months to send the required yearly investment income/taxes-paid statement.
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    Some information can be entered automatically in Elster, e.g. the information submitted by your employer. For people with simple tax situations, e.g. regular employee and no additional complications filing the taxes is pretty straightforward. It can be a bit intimidating if you've never done it before, but almost all the information you need to fill out will be automatically provided. You need to get your bank/broker statements and enter them as well, but those tell you exactly in which line you need to put the values. There's certainly a lot of improvement possible, but for simple cases it's pretty easy already (if you've done it at least once before).

andrepd 4y ago

>They have excellent engineering when used for good, but as history taught us, that's not always the case. For what's worth, the "German efficiency in WWII" is mostly a myth.