Shortly before the end of the filing deadline, more than two-thirds of property owners have submitted their property tax returns. A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Finance said on Monday. The deadline ends on Tuesday.
By Sunday, about 59.77 percent of the total expected statements had been sent electronically nationwide, the ministry spokesman said. In addition, an estimated 9.09 percent of the declarations were received on a paper form nationwide. The total rate of declarations received was therefore around 68.86 percent.
In mid-October, the federal states had extended the submission deadline from the end of October to the end of January 2023 due to the slow receipt of the new property tax returns from the tax authorities. There is no further extension of the deadline, as several country representatives had made clear. A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Finance referred to the responsibility of the federal states on Monday.
Data required from all owners
From 2025, the new property tax calculation will apply. The Federal Constitutional Court had demanded this, because the tax offices recently calculated the value of a property on the basis of completely outdated data, from 1935 in East Germany and from 1964 in West Germany. Almost 36 million properties have to be revalued for the recalculation. The tax authorities need data from all owners. Property tax is one of the most important sources of income for municipalities.
When the deadline expires, the tax offices will first send out reminders, as the Schleswig-Holstein Finance Minister Monika Heinold (Greens) said. The tax authorities then also have the option of levying surcharges for delays and penalties and making estimates.
An alliance of associations called on the federal states to issue the notices for determining the property tax value for the time being. A number of objections and lawsuits are already pending, which, due to constitutional concerns, have again been directed against the calculation methods of the new property tax, according to a statement published on Monday by the Federal Taxpayers’ Association and the German Tax Union, among others. The “Bild” newspaper reported about it first.
The declared goal of the associations is therefore to prevent a wave of objections and thus provide all owners with security and relieve the financial administration and tax consultants. “If the judicial clarification shows that the valuation rules now in force are unconstitutional, this could apply to all decisions and not just to those owners who have already contested their decisions by means of an objection.”
The website of the Taxpayers’ Association states that individual tax offices in some federal states have already sent the first notifications about the property tax values to owners who submitted their declarations early. In the coming weeks, the dispatch of the notifications will increase. Anyone wishing to object to the tax assessment must object to this assessment of value within one month.
