Taxel provides a command line interface (CLI) and Rust bindings for the ELSTER Rich Client (ERiC).

Generate an XML file in the XBRL standard from a CSV file with tax and accounting data; validate and send the XBRL document to tax authorities.

Supported features:

• eBilanz

• What is ELSTER?
• What is ERiC?
• What is eBilanz?
• Requirements
• Install Taxel
• Usage
• Testing
• Rust bindings for the ELSTER Rich Client (ERiC)
  • Generate bindings
  • Test bindings

Elster (short for Elektronische Steuererklärung) is a project by the German tax administrations to process tax returns and declarations.

ERiC is a C library that is integrated into a tax application. ERiC checks the data supplied by the tax application for plausibility, and transmits the data encrypted to the computing center of the respective tax administration.

eBilanz (short for Elektronische Bilanz) is the electronic transmission of the company balance sheet and P&L in a standardized format (XBRL) to the tax authorities in the context of tax declaration.

You need to have the shared library libericapi.so and the header file ericapi.h available on your system which can be downloaded from ELSTER for developers after access has been requested here.

For generating the bindings on your platform and architecture, you need libclang as well. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu install:

apt install llvm-dev libclang-dev clang

git clone [email protected]:quambene/taxel.git
cd taxel

# Build and install taxel binary to ~/.cargo/bin
cargo install --path ./taxel-cli

Note: Run cargo install --path ./taxel-cli again to update to the latest version. Uninstall the binary with cargo uninstall taxel.

1. Create an environment file:

   touch .env

2. Set environment variables LIBRARY_PATH, LIBRARY_NAME, HEADER_FILE, PLUGIN_PATH, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your .env. For example:

   LIBRARY_PATH=ERiC-36.1.8.0-Linux-x86_64/ERiC-36.1.8.0/Linux-x86_64/lib
   LIBRARY_NAME=ericapi
   HEADER_FILE=ERiC-36.1.8.0-Linux-x86_64/ERiC-36.1.8.0/Linux-x86_64/include/ericapi.h
   PLUGIN_PATH=ERiC-36.1.8.0-Linux-x86_64/ERiC-36.1.8.0/Linux-x86_64/lib/plugins2
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH=ERiC-36.1.8.0-Linux-x86_64/ERiC-36.1.8.0/Linux-x86_64/lib

3. Source your environment:

   set -a && source .env && set +a

4. Run taxel:

   # Extract values from xml file
   taxel extract \
       --xml-file "my_ebilanz.xml" \
       --output-file "my_ebilanz.csv"
   
   # Generate xml file from csv file
   taxel generate \
        --csv-file "my_ebilanz.csv" \
        --template-file "templates/elster_v11_ebilanz_v6.5_test.xml" \
        --output-file "my_bilanz.xml"
   
   # Validate xml file
   taxel validate \
       --tax-type "Bilanz" \
       --tax-version 6.4 \
       --xml-file "my_tax_data.xml"
   
   # Validate xml file and print confirmation as pdf file
   taxel validate \
       --tax-type "Bilanz" \
       --tax-version 6.4 \
       --xml-file "my_tax_data.xml" \
       --print "my_eBilanz.pdf"
   
   # Send xml file to tax authorities
   taxel send \
       --tax-type "Bilanz" \
       --tax-version 6.4 \
       --xml-file "my_tax_data.xml" \
       --certificate-file "my_elster_certificate.pfx" \
       --password "my_password"
   
   # Send xml file to tax authorities and print confirmation as pdf file
   taxel send \
       --tax-type "Bilanz" \
       --tax-version 6.4 \
       --xml-file "my_tax_data.xml" \
       --certificate-file "my_elster_certificate.pfx" \
       --password "my_password" \
       --print "my_eBilanz.pdf"

Remark: In step 2, note the difference between file name (e.g. libericapi.so on Linux) and LIBRARY_NAME (which is ericapi).

# Run unit tests for taxel
cargo test -p taxel -- --test-threads=1

# Run integration tests for taxel
cargo test -p taxel --test '*' --features integration-test -- --test-threads=1

# Run integration tests for taxel in release mode
cargo test -p taxel --release --test '*' --features integration-test -- --test-threads=1

# Run unit tests for taxel-cli
cargo test -p taxel-cli

# Run integration tests for taxel-cli
cargo test -p taxel-cli --test '*' --features integration-test -- --test-threads=1

# Run integration tests for taxel-cli in release mode
cargo test -p taxel-cli --release --test '*' --features integration-test -- --test-threads=1

# Run unit tests for taxel-xml
cargo test --lib -p taxel-xml

# Run unit tests for taxel-py
cd taxel-py
pytest -v -m unit

The bindings have to be generated on-the-fly for your specific platform and architecture:

cargo build -p taxel-bindings

The bindings are generated in target/debug/build/taxel-<random-id>/out/bindings.rs.

The bindings are included in src/lib.rs via include! macro and tested by:

cargo test -p taxel-bindings --lib

Logs are written to eric.log in the current directory.