German Tax Identification Number (Freedom Ascendant)

In Germany, since World War 2, every citizen has been assigned a tax identification number for the purpose of paying income taxes during filing each year. Several different proposals were made, some similar to the American system of Social Security Numbers (before it was declared unconstitutional), others based on the UK system. In the end, a unique system was devised, based on the need to identify refugees and provide a reasonably consistent way to identify all the people coming into the newly united Germany.

Structure
The Tax Identification Number is in the format QQ 12-34-56789, where QQ is the state mailing prefix, 12 is the year born, 34 is the Kreis (county) or Kreisfreie Stadt (county-free city) where born, and 56789 is a sequentially given number with the first two digits being the day born (+50 in the case of females), with the exceptions:


 * no one receives 000, 666, or 900 through 999
 * 56789 will start with 0 through 4 for men, and 5 through 9 for women.

Example: 1. A woman born in 1926 in Posen, Posen, could be given: PN 26-01-54221 2. A man born in 1932 in Berlin, could be given: BE 32-06-01044, indicating he was born in the Mitte neighborhood of the Mitte district.

A refugee was given a series of temporary ID prefixes, where the letters indicated the originating country, then the year, region of that country, and then sequentially assigned afterwards.

Example: 1. A man born in 1922 in Burgundy, France, of German descent: BG 24-04-21004 2. A woman born in 1923 in London, England, who decided to live in Germany after the war: EN 23-01-52011

Foreign Prefix Codes
Foreign prefixes were based on the German designation for a region, so that France would have FR-PA for France-Paris; the UK would have UK-IR for United Kingdom - Ireland, and so on, as their prefixes. This system was only valid until 1955, when the new Foreign Tax ID Generation Law came into effect.

1. France, based on the old Provinces, the only current map available to Heinrich Preuß, who devised the system for the Ministry of the Interior. There were 5933 numbers assigned for French nationals who decided to become German nationals, all Huguenots. In total, around 68,473 French nationals of German descent were allowed entry into Germany to become German nationals. 2. United Kingdom - 844 numbers assigned 3. Netherlands 4. Italy 5. Spain 6. Portugal 7. USA - There were about 4435 Americans who decided to stay in Germany after the war to help rebuild, and were granted several civilian honors and became prominent citizens in the new Germany. 8. Poland
 * PA - Paris
 * NM - Normandy
 * BR - Brittany
 * BG - Burgundy: Free County, Burgundy
 * AQ - Aquitaine
 * CH - Champagne
 * LT - Lotharingia (Lorraine); a German territory until 1957, when it voted to rejoin France
 * BN - Bourbonnais - the middle and west of the country
 * PV - Provence - the area of the southeast near Italy
 * EN - England
 * SC - Scotland
 * IR - Ireland
 * WA - Wales
 * MN - Isle of Man
 * KI - Channel Islands
 * NR: "North" (Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Overijssel)
 * MT: "Mitte" (North Holland, Gelderland, South Holland, Utrecht)
 * SD: "South" (Zeeland, Braband, Limburg, Artois, Hainaut, etc)
 * VN: Venedig - (Veneto, Friuli, Trentino)
 * LM: Lombard - (Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Aosta Valley)
 * MT: Mitte - (Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo)
 * SD: Süd (South) - Calabria, Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata)
 * IN: Inseln (Islands) - Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily
 * NE - New England
 * CS - southeastern US (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia)
 * SW - Southwestern United States (South California, Arizona, New Mexico, Rio Grande, East Sonora, West Sonora)
 * WS: West, the German Occupation Zone; commonly called "Wessis" in German
 * MT: Mitte, the US Occupation Zone
 * OS: East, the Soviet Occupation Zone; commonly called "Ossis" in German
 * SO: Southeast, the British Occupation Zone

Due to their special status in fighting to free the Germans from French, the Americans and British who decided to become German citizens who were veterans paid no income tax for the first five years.