Münster (dpa / lnw) – Three weeks after the end of the submission deadline, around 1.7 million real estate tax returns from defaulting real estate owners are still missing from the tax offices in North Rhine-Westphalia. Around five million property tax returns have been received as of Tuesday, a spokesman for the Oberfinanzdirektion (OFD) North Rhine-Westphalia told the German Press Agency. That corresponds to 73 percent. According to earlier information from the OFD, around 6.7 million plots of land and agricultural and forestry businesses in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to be revalued as a result of the property tax reform.
The submission deadline for the property tax return in NRW expired on January 31, 2023. According to the OFD at the time, around 70 percent of the property tax returns were received by the tax authorities in NRW on time. The state’s financial administration will start reminding defaulting owners of the tax at the beginning of next week, said the OFD spokesman when asked when the announced reminders from the tax offices will go out.
Defaulting real estate owners in North Rhine-Westphalia are not threatened with fines because of missing property tax returns or those that were not submitted on time. The Ministry of Finance had already announced that the tax authorities would not make use of the legal option of threatening and setting fines. If the reminder letter is unsuccessful, the tax authorities would estimate the tax bases.
