Questions about your German address and tax office letters

We open every letter sent to your PortoDoc address, scan it and put it in your account as a PDF. You also get a short summary and the traffic light – as an aid, not tax advice; the original letter counts.

Starter €19.95 a month (10 letters), Business €49.95 (25 letters, with deadline detection), Enterprise €79.95 (50 letters) – all incl. 19% VAT. The English AI translation is included in all plans. Each additional letter costs €2.95; paying yearly, you get 12 months for the price of 10.

We keep them for 90 days, then shred them. On request we send them to you first – prices are in the price list.

At any time, effective at the end of the paid month or year – with the “Cancel contracts here” button at the bottom of every page, in your account or by email to support@portodoc.de. Time already paid for is not refunded pro rata.

We scan every letter that reaches us and send you a notification. You will then find the letter as a PDF in your account.

Yes. Your data is stored with Hetzner in an EU data centre in Finland, every connection is encrypted, and no other account can see your letters. We don't pass letter contents to US cloud services.

We accept registered mail, sign for it and scan it like any other letter.

If a payment is outstanding, we lock the letter contents; sender, date and type stay visible. We keep accepting new mail, and once paid everything is back immediately.

Yes, at any time in your account with “Revoke authorisation”. After that we no longer accept mail for you; letters already scanned stay in your account.

Authorities, banks and insurers write to you by post – and deadlines run even when you're abroad. With PortoDoc you have a fixed German address: we scan your mail and you get a notification.

Only in certain cases. An authorised recipient accepts mail for you in Germany. If you are based outside the EU and EEA and deal with a German tax office, you must name one when that office asks you to (§ 123 AO); online sellers on marketplaces must do so without being asked (§ 22f UStG) – you can name PortoDoc. For people and companies from the EU and the EEA this is voluntary.

Yes, voluntarily. The § 123 AO obligation only applies to companies and people without a seat or residence in Germany, the EU or the EEA – a company from France or Poland can still name us as its authorised recipient.

If the tax office sends a notice to us as your authorised recipient, it is deemed delivered on the fourth day after posting (§ 122 (2) AO). The objection period, for example, runs from then. We scan your mail and you get a notification, but we don't monitor deadlines for you.

In essence: anyone without a residence, habitual abode, registered seat or management in Germany or another EU or EEA state must, on request, name an authorised recipient in Germany to the tax office. If they don't, a document is deemed delivered one month after posting – unless it is established that it did not reach the recipient or reached them later. The full text is on gesetze-im-internet.de.