Question: I have my own table view cell which is defined in my storyboard. I have also defined a custom UITableViewCell class for this special cell. So when I want to create an Outlet for my custom prototype cell I get an error that the Outlet cant be created.

Since this is not possible I have to do some ugly workarounds and use the tags in IB to reference the individual labels and buttons later on in my code.

I don't really see why this is not possible and I wonder if working with tags and [myCell viewWithTag:] is the best possible way to go here?

Answer: 
Because the outlet is a one-to-one connection between your controller and a specific item within the view. In the case of a prototype cell, it is simply a description of a cell that can have an arbitrary number of different items (i.e. rows in your table view). How would the controller know which item you are referring to (e.g. row 5 or 500)? That is why you are receiving the error message.

Lucas provided one method to refer to your connection via tags which works perfectly well.
I assume you are using dynamic prototypes - in the attribute inspector of the tableview in the storyboard there is an option to select "static cells" or "dynamic prototypes". You can do what you are trying to do if you select "static cells" as there is only one cell in your tableview at run time for each cell in the storyboard. Using this approach you will only be able to use the cells you create in storyboard i.e. you will not be able to select the number of cells in your code.