The spread of the coronavirus also poses new challenges for the Federal Central Tax Office.

With its four offices in Bonn, Berlin, Saarlouis and Schwedt and almost 2,300 employees throughout Germany, new questions about the organisation of task completion arose almost daily over the past three weeks. For this reason, a crisis management team was set up at the beginning of March in order to be able to respond to the effects of the pandemic in good time. The task of the crisis management team was also to inform employees about current developments regarding the corona virus and to support them in dealing with the new challenges.

The primary goal of our actions was and is to protect our employees and at the same time maintain the service. "We are particularly proud that over 90 percent of our employees were able to work from home at a very early stage due to the technical possibilities," says President Maren Kohlrust-Schulz..

The functionality of the BZSt is guaranteed at all times. This is primarily due to the fact that the BZSt is pushing ahead with the digitisation of administration and the further flexibilisation of working methods. For example, since last year the employees of the BZSt have been almost completely equipped with notebooks and prepared for the challenges of mobile working.

In the few areas in which work cannot or can only partially be carried out from the home workplace for technical or factual reasons, precautions have been taken by means of further measures within the framework of emergency plans. For example, the employees affected were divided into different teams that work independently of each other in terms of time and location.