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Important notes

In connection with the use of the import functionality, the Federal Central Tax Office draws attention to the following:

Use of the import function is at your own risk. The Federal Central Tax Office excludes any liability for direct and indirect damages incurred by the applicants due to the use of this functionality or the inability to use this functionality, in particular for loss of data, additional expenses or incorrect results, loss of profit, business interruption, loss of business information and other financial losses.

Structure of a CSV file for the import function of My BOP

1. Line: Latest CSV version of the import function with the prefix #v, for example "#v2.4"

2. Line, only for imports with one record type: the field designations must be entered in this line in the order of the record type of the form. The field names can be based on the field names of the record table and serve to assign the columns when creating the CSV file.

3. to last line: data records to be imported, structured according to the record tables and record types

Versioning and version table

Changes to the import function result in a new version of the import interface. With the help of the version table, changes between the older version and the latest version can be traced. This allows you to adapt older CSV files to the latest version. When importing a CSV file, a check is made that your CSV file carries the latest version of the import function. The current version table can be found in the import assistance of the form.

Record tables and record types

For each form with import, there is at least one record table which describes one record type. A record type defines the exact structure of a line in a CSV file. Both the order of the fields and the format specifications for each field are predefined. In addition, mandatory fields are marked which must be filled in in any case.

For more complex import operations, there are several record tables, as several record types have to be worked with. All record tables can be found in the import assistance in the import area of the respective form.

Specifications for valid CSV files

The following guidelines must be observed. Otherwise, the import may fail due to invalid information or your data may be transferred incorrectly during the import.

1. The entries in a line are separated from each other by separators (, or ;). Only one separator may be used file-wide.
2. The order of the entries in the rows is determined by the order of the field labels in the record table used.
3. Information that is marked as mandatory in the data set table must be entered.
4. Optional information may be left blank. An empty entry is represented by two consecutive separators.
5. Blank lines are not allowed.
6. A dot must always be used as the decimal separator of numbers.
7. The permitted encoding is ISO-8859-15.
8. Information (except numbers) may be enclosed in single or double inverted commas.
9. Separators (, or ;) may appear in statements, provided the statement is enclosed in inverted commas (" or ').
10. Inverted commas (" or ') may be used in statements provided that the statement is also enclosed in inverted commas. The following should be noted: inverted commas in statements must be doubled if the entire statement is enclosed in the same inverted commas.  
    Valid examples:
    "Delivery to 'Mayer AG' 2018"
    "Delivery to ""Mayer AG"" 2018"

Import of the CSV file

The import of the CSV file into the form can be carried out in the expandable area "Import of data (CSV format)" of the form (= "Import area"). Each CSV file is subjected to an extensive check during import. If errors occur, the data records of the CSV file are not imported.

Instead, you will be offered a CSV file with comments for download in the import area. In this commented CSV file, you will find all errors that occurred during the import in the last column. After correcting the errors, you can repeat the import process.

After a successful import, you should check that the number of records in the CSV file matches the number of imported records.

Hotline and user support

In addition to the information available in the online help accessed directly from My BOP , you can contact a hotline set up by the federal and state tax administrations, which is available

• Monday to Friday 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and
• Saturday and Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 6 p.m.,

with any questions or problems relating to My BOP . Assistance is provided with individual questions at +49 (0)1805/235055 (EUR 0.14 per minute). The hotline can also be contacted via

• fax (+49 (0)1805/235054) or

• email (hotline@ELSTER.de).

Please note: Tax advice cannot be provided via this hotline.