German receives 1700 identical letters from taxman

Most people dread a letter from the tax office. So spare a thought for the German man who got 1700 of them.

In an administrative meltdown worthy of a Franz Kafka novel, the mountain of tax correspondence arrived at his front door in 10 boxes, a local newspaper reported.

Germany's finance ministry apologised on Wednesday for the "technical error" that threw the man from Quickborn in northern Germany.

"The finance ministry has contacted the taxpayer and apologised," said a ministry spokeswoman.

The ministry offered to take the letters - which were all identical - off the man's hands and destroy them, but he declined the offer as unnecessary, she said.

Europe's biggest economy may be at the forefront of many advanced industries but has long suffered from notoriously outdated bureaucratic quirks.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government has repeatedly pledged to cut red tape and moved to offer certain administrative processes online.

Even Scholz has admitted to being baffled by German bureaucracy, complaining in 2022 that he had to apply in person for his passport and ID card rather than online.

As recently as 2021, it emerged that some 1600 fax machines were still lurking in the German parliament as the government announced it was finally planning to get rid of them.

- AFP