Finanzamt – Court Ruling (Germany, 2024)

The data subject had a dispute with the German tax authority (Finanzamt), which was resolved by a previous judgement. After that, on 14 October 2020, the data subject filed an access request with this authority, which is the controller in the present case. On 21 October 2020, the controller rejected the request, arguing that they did not have a right to access under Article 15 GDPR as the legal proceeding with the FA was already terminated. Moreover, the controller argued that the request was excessive under Article 12(5) GDPR. The data subject started a lawsuit against the controller before the Berlin-Brandenburg Fiscal Court (Finanzgericht Berlin-Brandenburg – FG Berlin-Brandenburg). The data subject claimed they had not only the right to obtain a copy of their personal data, but also to have a copy of the documents or an extract of the database where their personal data was contained. The court did not uphold the data subject’s requests. The court argued that Article 15(3) GDPR must be interpreted restrictively and, therefore, the data subject did not have the right they claimed. Moreover, the court held that, even if the data subject had such a right, their request would have been excessive as per Article 12(5) GDPR. Therefore, the data subject lodged an appeal against the decision with the Federal Fiscal Court (Bundesfinanzhof – BFH). First of all, the BFH noted that the right to access under Article 15 GDPR is conferred to data subjects independently from any other legal proceeding. It stated that the purpose of this article is to ensure that the data subject is aware of the processing of their personal data and can verify the lawfulness of the processing. Secondly, the BFH dismissed the data subject’s argument and found that the data subject has no general right to obtain a copy of extracts from documents where personal data is contained. According to the court, the data subject can normally verify the accuracy of the personal data and the lawfulness of i