On January 1, 2020, the right to electronic communication with authorities will come into force. On the one hand, this affects all federal authorities that enable electronic delivery (e-delivery). On the other hand, companies are fundamentally obliged to ensure that they can be reached by the authorities by means of electronic delivery. Exceptions exist for companies only if they are not obliged to submit UVAs due to falling below the sales limit or if - more likely in exceptional cases - the technical requirements for e-delivery are not met.

An e-delivery means that a document has been electronically delivered to the inbox of the Corporate Service Portal (USP) - there is no direct e-mail to the company, even if an e-mail notification of the delivery is made.

A significant advantage of e-delivery lies in the short period of time between notification via e-mail and collection of the delivered document in the "mail basket". However, it should be noted here that every item to be delivered is (only) kept in the mail basket for 2 weeks. If it is not picked up (opened), it will be deleted and is still considered delivered as a rule and, for example, with regard to the official deadline.

Incidentally, transactions by the tax authorities will continue to be sent in FinanzOnline, but information is also provided in the USP. Even if electronic delivery is mandatory from January 1, 2020, there are no sanctions for not participating in e-delivery for the time being. The delivery will then continue to be made by post.