[kybernetyk]

I'm regularly filing taxes in the UK and in Germany. The German ELSTER system is a bad joke compared to how this is handled in the UK.

In the UK it's a bunch of nicely designed web forms with clear worded explanations what they expect you to fill in the fields.

In Germany it's ... well you can be masochistic and try to use ELSTER webapp which runs only on certain browsers. With explanations like "fill in here any amount if you fall under §223 EKST, 4 II".

So you either get a paid 3rd party software which still isn't the quality of the official UK filling service (somehow Germans have a love for their cryptic explanations directly referencing laws - god forbid someone would use simple and clear explanations) or you pay a professional to do your taxes. Which is what most people do.