Knowledge · phone

Phone Service for the Tax Firm: Reachable During Deadline Season, With § 203 in Mind

How an AI phone assistant answers client calls during peak periods, documents status and document questions in a structured way and protects focused work – and what § 203 StGB and § 62a StBerG mean for the external service provider.

It's early March, and the firm is in full season. A tax clerk is working on the annual financial statements of a GmbH client when the phone rings for the third time in twenty minutes: one client wants to know whether their return has gone out, the next asks about missing receipts, a third has a letter from the tax office in their mailbox. Each of these calls is legitimate – and each one pulls her out of a task she then has to work her way back into. During the peak period, the phone is the greatest enemy of focused case work.

Why the firm's phone overflows during the season

Tax firms work in waves: annual financial statements and tax returns in the first half of the year, payroll runs at month-end, and in between tax audits and advance-payment assessments. During the peak period, call volume rises significantly – industry observers report an increase of around half compared with quiet months – and this hits a sector that, according to the Bundessteuerberaterkammer, is short of tens of thousands of skilled workers. The existing staff have to handle the phone alongside their actual work.

The real damage here is not just the one lost client – many firms are already at capacity and even turn clients away. The damage has two sides: the burden on the team and the reachability that clients expect. Surveys show that a considerable share of clients cannot reach their adviser promptly with urgent matters, and that more than half have therefore already thought about switching – and the phone remains the preferred channel despite client portals, especially when it comes to deadlines and assessments. The answering machine barely fills this gap: someone with a question about an advance payment rarely leaves it on the tape and calls again the next day – right in the middle of the next wave.

What the Phone Agent takes over in the firm

An AI phone assistant answers incoming calls immediately – even several at once – and handles them according to your specifications:

• Documenting status and callback requests: "Has my return gone out yet?" is captured in the call log with name, client assignment and callback number, including an AI summary.
• Answering document questions from your stored Knowledge Base – a checklist per occasion (annual statement, income tax, payroll), without anyone having to pick up.
• Recording meeting appointments or, as an appointment agent, booking them directly into the firm's calendar, depending on how you set it up.
• Pre-qualifying new enquiries: legal form, matter (ongoing bookkeeping, annual statement, income tax), previous adviser, contact details – the firm decides on acceptance based on the summary.
• Forwarding urgent cases by rules: a letter from the tax office with a short deadline during office hours straight to the responsible case worker.

What it deliberately does not do: give tax or legal advice, assess figures, interpret assessments. It is the organisational relief on the phone – answering, sorting, documenting – not the professional one.

Professional secrecy: the framework a firm needs to know

Tax advisers are professional secrecy holders under § 203 para. 1 StGB. With an external phone service, this is therefore about more than data protection – and at this point there was long a misunderstanding in the discussion, so let's be precise:

• Two protected interests, two contracts. GDPR protects personal data, § 203 StGB protects client confidentiality – the very fact that a mandate exists. A data processing agreement (DPA) under Art. 28 GDPR is necessary, but does not automatically cover professional secrecy.
• Participating persons are permitted. Since the 2017 reform, § 203 para. 3 StGB expressly allows "other participating persons" – i.e. external service providers – to be involved. This provision is what makes the use admissible in the first place.
• Obligation in text form. In professional law, § 62a StBerG specifies this: the service provider must be obligated to confidentiality in text form and instructed about the criminal consequences; if they in turn bring in further providers, the obligation must be passed on. If the firm fails to secure this, it can make itself liable to prosecution under § 203 para. 4 StGB.
• Place of processing. What matters is not "in Germany", but processing within the EU without insecure third-country transfer, plus data minimisation – only what the matter requires is captured.

A practical note from the professional debate: a DAV opinion from 2025 classifies purely machine processing, in which no employee of the provider sees the data in plain text, as not "disclosure" within the meaning of § 203 – but this does not remove the obligation requirement. This is not legal advice: you should review the specific contract and the chain of obligations on a case-by-case basis with your data protection officer. A reputable provider proactively presents the DPA, the confidentiality obligation with instruction on criminal consequences and EU processing – ask for them actively, not just for the DPA.

Protecting focused work instead of just answering

The greatest lever is not round-the-clock reachability, but the protection of focused work. Set up fixed focus periods during which the firm's number is diverted to the Phone Agent – likewise when busy and after office hours. After two weeks, the call log shows how large the block of pure status and document questions really is; this exact block can be worked through in batches, prepared, with the file already open. The client who calls at 7 p.m. about the tax office letter is captured immediately instead of being sent to the tape – and the next morning begins with a sorted list instead of a blinking machine.

How to test it in your firm

With webRichtung phone you can try this with low risk: set up a Phone Agent with its own phone number, divert the firm's number there during focus periods, when busy and after closing time, and, in the current model, test 15 call minutes free over 7 days. Afterwards, the call log shows you how many matters would otherwise have been lost to the busy signal. How answering works in principle is described in automatic call answering; what being unreachable actually costs is shown in What missed calls really cost. If meeting appointments are to be assigned directly, online appointment booking helps. Questions about the contract and setup can be clarified via the contact page.

Markdown · Text