Millions of property owners have to fill out a property tax return.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The deadline for the property tax return has been extended once until January 31, 2023. The federal and state governments agreed on a corresponding decision at a meeting on Thursday. “That gives the taxpayer, the tax authorities and the tax consultants breathing space,” tweeted Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP). “At the moment there are also other concerns and tasks that we have to take care of.” So far, the deadline was October 31, 2022.
By extending the deadline, the federal and state governments want to ensure that citizens and companies are not overwhelmed with procedures for late property tax returns in times of crisis. They also fear that the tax offices could receive countless requests for extensions of the deadline shortly before the end of the original deadline.
After a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, the federal and state governments agreed on a reform of the property tax in 2019. Therefore, all property owners in Germany must submit a property tax return this year. The federal and state governments had originally set a four-month period for this, which ran from July 1st to October 31st of this year. However, according to surveys, only around 20 percent of all tax returns have been received by the tax offices so far – shortly before the deadline.
“Even if Hamburg is three percentage points above the national average in terms of the return of declarations, the response rate of around one third two weeks before the end of October expires, is well below expectations,” admitted Hamburg’s Finance Senator Andreas Dressel (SPD).
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
One reason for this: the taxpayers have to collect the necessary documents from the state authorities themselves. In addition, there are different property tax models depending on the federal state as a result of the reform. This makes the tax return quite complicated, experts complain.
>> Read here: This is how you keep track of the property tax chaos
In some federal states, taxpayers were not even written to. Many property owners may not even know they have to make a statement or by when.
“In addition to the efforts of the federal states, the Federal Ministry of Finance should once again intensify the information and advertising campaign for the declaration”, demanded SPD finance senator Dressel.
Property tax: Federal states skeptical about extending the deadline
The Federal Chamber of Tax Advisors, the Federal Tax Union and most recently the Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had recently spoken out in favor of an extension of the deadline. However, many federal states were initially skeptical about this in the run-up to the meeting with the federal government.
The tax offices needed enough time to process the expected 36 million declarations. And once that happens, municipalities need sufficient time to adjust municipal property tax assessment rates as intended, they argued.
More on property tax and property tax returns:
Politicians accept that some property owners will pay higher property taxes in the future. The bottom line is that the reform should be revenue-neutral, i.e. not bring in more or less taxes. In order to ensure this, the municipalities should adjust the assessment rates. The property tax currently flushes 15 billion euros into the coffers of the municipalities every year. The reform is to come into force on January 1, 2025.
However, experts had recently warned that sticking to the previous deadline would lead to great chaos. Tax union leader Florian Köbler said that the tax offices would “collapse” if they had to send each individual taxpayer a reminder by letter.
Some federal states such as Baden-Württemberg are already using pragmatic solutions. Even before the federal and state governments reached an agreement, the state had decided not to send taxpayers a reminder from the tax office until January. Anyone who had taken their time, despite the deadline that actually expired at the end of October, did not have to expect a fine.
“It’s good that the states have agreed on a one-time extension of the deadline,” said Baden-Württemberg’s Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz (Greens). “The citizens now have a little more time, but they should use it now.” Like everyone involved, Bayaz made it clear that there would be no further extension of the deadline.
More: This can be done by owners with high property taxes