I sat this morning in a particular German office in Wiesbaden (I do it monthly). To be a retired military guy, and desire to shop at the BX....you play this game of taxation. So you have to keep your receipts and monthly visit the taxation office in town to admit what you bought and pay the tax.
It's safe to say between Kaiserslautern and Wiesbaden....I've probably wasted at least two hundred of these visits....each requiring a waiting time of 10 to 60 minutes. I've learned over the years to never go on the first or second day of the month, and in fact....it's always best to wait till after tenth day of the month (which kinda violates the agreement you signed), if you want to cut this down to ten minutes.
I'd like to fix this...by just suggesting to them to have a computer set up, and have us enter our number and PIN, then list the purchase receipts, dates, and amounts ourselves....then hit enter, and then the system would just ask for the Euro, and you pay via some card. You could do this in less than three minutes. Some clerk at the end of the day could audit 20-percent of these to just keep folks honest. Instead of having two different bureaucratic clerks handle all these functions....you could just computerize the whole process.
But no.
Getting some change to occur requires some massive order down from the state office or from Berlin itself.
I've come over the years to accept this little negative about Germans....in that processes are not meant to be upgraded or improved. Once a process starts....it continues on.
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