Legal requirements and legal limits of fully automated administrative procedures

The Tax Procedure Modernisation Act, which came into force on 1 January 2017, introduced a number of significant changes to the German Fiscal Code (Abgabenordnung - AO), including the possibility of issuing fully automated tax assessments. During the legislative process, the Bundestag resolved to amend the Federal Administrative Procedure Act (Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz des Bundes - VwVfG) and the Tenth Book of the Social Code (SGB X) in parallel. The objective was to facilitate the issuance of fully automated administrative acts across the three pillars of administrative procedural law, thereby promoting a largely uniform evolution of the three procedural codes. In the initial phase of the research project, the legislative process was observed and documented. In particular, the potential for using the proposal, which was originally intended solely as an amendment to the AO, as a model for a possible adaptation of the VwVfG was examined. Additionally, the necessity for developing independent legal solutions for the administrative procedure in certain areas was determined. In the second phase, the adopted legal provisions were examined and solutions were developed for open questions. The overarching objective was to devise proposals for the legal design of fully automated administrative procedures under the VwVfG, with due consideration for the legal constraints associated with such procedures

(Publications are in German.).