“Tax advisors are required under Section 57 of the German Tax Advisor Act (StBerG) to maintain confidentiality, and as professionals bound by statutory secrecy under Section 203 of the German Criminal Code (StGB), they are legally obligated to keep client data confidential. At the same time, receipts, annual financial statements, and tax returns need to be exchanged with clients and the tax office as smoothly as possible.” TeamDrive combines both: end-to-end encrypted, GDPR- and GoBD-compliant data exchange with direct integration into DATEV Unternehmen Online.
Legal Requirements for Cloud Use by Tax Firms
Section 57 StBerG obliges tax advisors to maintain confidentiality about everything they learn in the course of their professional practice. As professionals bound by statutory secrecy under Section 203 StGB, tax advisors have been permitted, since the 2017 reform, to engage external service providers such as cloud providers without committing a criminal offense – provided the provider itself is contractually bound to confidentiality. TeamDrive provides a separate contract for professionals bound by statutory secrecy for this purpose.
Using DATEV Belegtransfer With TeamDrive
DATEV Unternehmen Online offers three ways to connect data: via DATEV Cloud, via email, or via Belegtransfer (document transfer). TeamDrive specifically covers the Belegtransfer route: clients place their scanned or electronic receipts in a TeamDrive Space folder that is set up as an import folder in DATEV Unternehmen Online. The tax advisor then imports the data from there – with no media break, GoBD-compliant, and archived in an audit-proof manner.
Pricing for Tax Firms
Entry-level pricing starts at 6.33 € per seat per month (Professional Starter 5 Cloud, billed annually). The starter package for the firm (Professional Starter 5 Cloud) with 5 users and 100 GB of cloud storage in Germany costs 389 € per year.