When it comes to taxes and the Bahamas, terms such as "paradise" and "oasis" are usually used. A completely different link between the Caribbean island state and the tax authorities has now been made thanks to a small mistake with curious consequences: Because the wrong information got onto a flyer, the Basel-Stadt tax administration unceremoniously bought a web address in the Bahamas.
The faux pas occurred on a freshly printed information flyer on digital tax returns, which was sent to more than 100,000 households in the canton. The instructions on the flyer asked taxpayers to register at the address "www.eSteuern.BS/private".
However, the crucial ".ch" was missing at the end, which meant that the URL did not point to Basel-Stadt, but to the Bahamas. After all, the ".bs" ending is not only the abbreviation for the canton, but also the country-specific top-level domain for the Caribbean state.
"It is very annoying"
"It is very annoying that this mistake has happened. We very much regret it," said SRF, whose "Regionaljournal Basel" first reported on the matter, quoting David Weber, spokesman for the Basel-Stadt Department of Finance. The incorrect information had occurred when the address was transferred from the website to the flyer.
After discovering the error, the tax administration had two options: Either to reprint and send out the flyer, or to purchase the incorrect web address without further ado and use it as a redirect. According to estimates, reprinting the flyers would have cost over CHF 100,000. The second option, buying the BS domain, would have been much cheaper at just 900 francs.
Users do not have to worry about security, SRF quotes Weber: "No data is transferred. There is only a link to the correct page."
Registration is still ongoing
At the moment, the incorrect address still leads nowhere, as the registration of the domain in the Bahamas has only just been applied for, as Weber told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. As soon as the registration is completed, the incorrect URL will be redirected to the correct one for the Canton of Basel-Stadt.
There is not much time left: taxpayers will be able to complete their tax return for 2024 online as early as next week - probably with a slight detour via the Caribbean.