• Domestically established taxable persons (Section 2 German Turnover Tax Act) and legal persons under public law: The application process is conducted without forms. The tax office in whose district the permanent establishment of the company is located or the tax office in whose district the place of management is located is responsible. For natural persons, the tax office in whose district their domestic domicile is located is responsible.
• Taxable persons established and domiciled abroad, corporations or groups of persons domiciled and with management abroad: The application process is conducted without forms. There are central responsibilities of the tax offices depending on the country of residence. You can find an overview of the central responsibilities on page 3 of information sheet for tax withholding for construction work, which can be found at the following link:

In some cases, the tax offices provide on their websites printed forms in various languages. The tax office responsible for any given country and its website can be found using the tax office search.

Please note that only the responsible tax office, not the German Federal Central Tax Office, issues certificates of exemptions.

Yes. Especially for reasons of liability (Section 48a Paragraph 3 German Income Tax Act). The liability of the purchaser or customer is excluded if, at the time of the consideration, the purchaser or customer was provided with a certificate of exemption whose legality he was able to trust. This includes the duty to check the certificate of exemption and to verify that the certificate of exemption is stamped with a seal and contains a security number. If provided with a copy, all information must be clearly legible.

For documentation purposes, you can print out the result of the online confirmation and attach it to your accounting documents.

As a registered user, you can check the validity of a certificate of exemption under the link eibe.bff-online.de/eibe/ (login).
After logging in, you need the following information in order to carry out the verification under "Einzelabfrage FSB":

1. Select federal state (please select the state in which the payer is located),
2. The payer’s tax number and
3. The security number found on the certificate of exemption.

If you do not know the federal state or the responsible tax office, you can find the appropriate tax office with the help of the tax office search. The respective federal state is listed in the search result as well.

Go to the website eibe.bff-online.de/eibe/. Click on “Registrierung” in the left column.

There you can freely choose your username – in compliance with the requirements. Once you have sent your registration, an account for the retrieval of certificates of exemption will be set up for you. After you access the email with the confirmation link, your account will be activated.

Finally, you will receive another email with the necessary access data that you can later use to log in.

No. This is not possible for reasons of data protection and protecting tax secrecy.

Please contact the tax office that issued the certificate of exemption.

The BZSt can only assist with technical problems (registration, login, etc.) and does not have the authority or the knowledge of the responsible/issuing tax office.

Please use our contact form to request additional information.

The application must be submitted to the tax office responsible for the payer (pursuant to Section 48c Paragraph 2 German Income Tax Act), not to the BZSt.

Inform your responsible tax office about this situation and arrange for a new certificate of exemption to be issued on short notice and for the data to be transmitted to the BZSt. Immediate transfer of the data to the BZSt is not possible.

The payer is obliged to give you a legible copy of the certificate of exemption. If he does not comply with this obligation, it can be assumed that he is not in possession of a valid certificate of exemption.

Consequently, as the recipient of the service, you are obligated to withhold the taxes for construction work and pay it to the tax office responsible for the payer.

If you lose your certificate of exemption, please contact your responsible tax office. They will provide you a replacement certificate with the same contents and security number.

Please note that only the responsible tax office, not the German Federal Central Tax Office, issues certificates of exemptions or replacement certificates.

Generally, certificates of exemption must be retained by the purchaser or customer for six years (cf. Section 147 Paragraph 3 German Fiscal Code).

Certificates of exemption fall under the obligation to keep accounts and records of Sections 140 et seq. German Fiscal Code; therefore, the purchaser or customer must retain the documents given to him by the payer.