German Tax Form Usability
English translation of the previous post.
In one of the three final exam thesises I analysed usability issued with the german tax forms. As food for discussion I also designed a new version of the recently introduced “Simplified income tax declaration form for employees” (which is not as simple as the name indicates).
Some key findings:
- The forms are highly unusable and user-unfriendly.
- Numerous detail improvements, especially regarding instructional text are possible.
- For a general improvement of usability a complete revision of the forms is inevitable.
- Several alternative proposals exist, e.g. from the “Bund der Steuerzahler” (a german tax-payers association), but have hardly been recognized. Also, looking at other countries guides to some more elegant solutions.
- A general improvement of the forms could result in a benefitial redefinition of the realtionship between tax adminsitration and the people.
My work is available for download (in German language):
- Thesis (PDF, 4 MB)
- Tax form re-design (PDF, 108 KB)
3 Comments
I was interested to read your analysis of the German tax forms. I’m currently in the process of trying to fill out the German forms for my taxes in Germany – total frustration! Do you know if the tax forms are published in English – maybe somewhere on the Internet?
Diana,
thanks for you comment. Unfortunately I am unaware of any translated version of the forms. To my knowledge, not even the electronic software version (ELSTER) offers this.
This must be a huge problem for a lot of people from foreign countries paying taxes in Germany. I used to work in the U.S. for a while. Although I knew the language good enough to survive from day to day, filling out the american tax form with all it’s unknown terms was a pain in the neck.
Marian
Hello ever1
Does anybody know the German equivalent of these IRS TAX Forms:
1099-OID
1040
1040-V
1040-X
1099-A
1096
Any help would be appreciated, thanks
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