Oh, god...it's ages ince I've worked in tax, and the unique IDs never used to be that long - I wonder whether they've strted incorporating multiple bits of information into a single reference to 'simplify' things...
...IIRC, there used to be your tax office's reference, your employer's tax office reference - since you as an individual & your employer as an organisation weren't usually dealt with by the same offices, whih used to cause endless confusion - and a unique tax reference as well. I think each of the offices' codes was at least 5 or 6 letters/digits long (which weren't done to exhaustion, I seem to remember they referred to regions & then offices with regions, much as postcodes drill down into levels of detail), and the unique ID was something like 10 or 13 numbers/digits long, even then.
So if they've combined those, that could well lead to, say, 25 digits?
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Date: 2008-12-03 04:39 pm (UTC)...IIRC, there used to be your tax office's reference, your employer's tax office reference - since you as an individual & your employer as an organisation weren't usually dealt with by the same offices, whih used to cause endless confusion - and a unique tax reference as well. I think each of the offices' codes was at least 5 or 6 letters/digits long (which weren't done to exhaustion, I seem to remember they referred to regions & then offices with regions, much as postcodes drill down into levels of detail), and the unique ID was something like 10 or 13 numbers/digits long, even then.
So if they've combined those, that could well lead to, say, 25 digits?