I. Purpose oft he Company Register

The purpose of the unified Company Register is to promote the reduction of bureaucracy and the digitalization of administrative services and, in this context, to create a central register at the Federal Statistical Office as the competent register authority, which will be superordinate to the approximately 120 existing registers in Germany and will manage company data centrally. The register is also intended to help save costs in the context of register administration as well as for the companies required to register. Preliminary estimates put the total annual bureaucracy relief potential for companies at an amount in the three-digit millions.
The register will include all master data such as the company (name), registered office, business address, legal form and business sector. In addition, the UBRegG creates the conditions for the introduction of a uniform national business number. This is intended to enable cross-register and cross-administration identification of a company, which will enable those required to register to report their diverse data only once (“once-only” principle), so that the various authorities can access the transmitted data of the individual companies by means of a link to the uniform national business number.

II. Background

According to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, there are currently around 120 individual registers in Germany with company references, which act largely independently of each other and do not usually exchange information. Until now, the various registers have often assigned their own register numbers, making it problematic to identify companies across the different registers. This made them prone to errors and made it time-consuming to update or exchange data. In addition, this creates a great deal of reporting and updating work for the companies. The business identification number is intended to create a clearer overview of companies. It is used to clearly identify economically active natural and legal persons as well as associations of persons and to centrally store the information obtained in the Company Register.

III. Main Regulatory Content

1. Creation of a Company Register as a Basic Register

First, the Company Register will be created. As a basic register, its intention is to record and centralize all “economically active entities” in Germany. This includes legal entities, associations of persons, but also natural persons who are economically active and provided that they are listed in at least one administrative register.
Master data, identification numbers and metadata are to be transmitted to the basic register, and the assignment of a uniform national business number is intended to make multiple reports of identical master data to individual registers superfluous in the future.

2. Uniform Federal Business Number

In order to facilitate the unique identification of companies in Germany, each company is to be assigned a uniform national business number (hereinafter referred to as the “Business Number”) pursuant to § 139c German Fiscal Code (Abgabenordnung – AO) upon inclusion in the Company Register. At the same time, the UBRegG provides that each register will continue to use its previous numbers – the Business Number will therefore be assigned in addition.
The introduction of the Business Number is intended to significantly reduce bureaucratic obligations, especially for companies. This is particularly due to a reduction of reporting obligations regarding certain data. The introduction of the uniform national Business Number also promises to help increase administrative efficiency by networking the registers, with the Federal Statistical Office being the register-keeping agency.

3. Quality Improvement of the Stored Data

In addition to reducing bureaucracy, the Company Register is intended to improve the quality of the data collected. To this end, the UBRegG provides for two automated procedures. First, a transmission procedure has been created by which the Federal Statistical Office, as the register authority managing the Company Register, is to provide public bodies with updated or new data on a regular and recurring basis when a company is newly established, changed or terminated. On the other hand, public authorities have the possibility to request data under certain conditions, as far as this is necessary for the fulfillment of the tasks within their competence. § 5 UBRegG contains a long enumerative catalog of the authorities to which data from the Company Register may be transmitted.

4. Timeframe for Implementation of the UBRegG

However, it will take some time before the UBRegG is implemented in practice. According to information to date, the first expansion stage of the Company Register should be ready for operation from the first quarter of 2024 and enable single reporting based on the “once-only” principle. Final completion is targeted for the second quarter of 2026.

IV. Advice for the Practice

1. Avoiding Fines

The creation of the central Company Register and its linking to other registers will enable automated register reconciliation. In this context, any inconsistencies or missing entries in company registers will come to light and errors can be punished independently by the competent body, for example with fines. For this reason, more care should be taken now to ensure that existing reporting obligations to all registers are properly fulfilled.

2. No Easing of Reporting Obligations so far

It is not clear from the law whether affected companies are exempted from their reporting obligations to other registers by a centralized data transmission to the basic register. This means that entrepreneurs must continue to report to the existing registers and cannot exempt themselves from this by reporting to the Company Register.
In practice, affected companies usually have various reporting obligations vis-à-vis different registers. An actual and noticeable reduction in the bureaucratic burden on companies and the administration would require that the companies concerned are able to fulfill their reporting obligations to other registers by submitting a single notification to the basic register (“once-only” principle). If the reporting obligations for the companies concerned remain in place vis-à-vis the other registers, this would simply add a further reporting obligation in addition to the existing obligations. This would defeat the purpose of the law, which is to reduce bureaucracy. It remains to be seen to what extent these obligations will be concretized by the UBRegG. Until then, no changes will apply to the companies concerned. In particular, the “once-only” principle does not yet apply in the current version of the law.
Entrepreneurs must therefore continue to decide for themselves and check which data they have to report to which registers, which means that the bureaucratic burden is not reduced for the time being. In the future, however, it may be easier for authorities that would normally request basic data from an entrepreneur not to do so because they can obtain the data from the Company Register.

V. Consequences and Outlook

The current version of the UBRegG does not yet reveal the ambitious goals it has set itself to create a modern, efficient, transparent and centralized registry landscape.
The adoption of the UBRegG does not initially change much in the practice of the companies concerned. Since the reporting obligation to various Company Registers remains unchanged for the time being, the risk of discovering missing or inconsistent register entries increases due to simplified and automated register comparisons. The high level of transparency may reveal existing incorrect reports. For those affected, it is therefore all the more urgent to maintain an overview of the completeness and correctness of the entries in the various registers.
In order to actually create a bureaucratic and administrative relief for companies, a further adjustment of the law is necessary before 2024. In this respect, possible changes to the law are still to be expected in the course of implementation. It therefore remains to be seen how and when the problems addressed will be resolved.