Munich (dpa/lby) – Property owners now only have a few hours: the deadline for submitting new property tax returns is midnight. The submission deadline was originally scheduled for the end of October 2022, but this deadline had been extended throughout Germany up to and including January 31. There is no further extension this time – the deadline ends next night.
Shortly before the end, the data of around a third of all property owners in Bavaria were still missing. Up to and including Sunday, more than 4.2 million property tax returns were submitted throughout Bavaria. This corresponds to around 66 percent of the total declarations to be made, as the Ministry of Finance announced on Monday.
Anyone who misses the deadline is threatened with sanctions – but not immediately. “If citizens do not submit a property tax return – as with all other types of tax – various measures can be considered, such as late payment penalties or, ultimately, estimates,” a spokesman for the Ministry of Finance recently explained. However, the financial administration will take into account that property tax is a “new law”. “Therefore, in a first step, the owners are reminded of their obligation to pay taxes. In principle, however, we strongly recommend submitting the property tax return as soon as possible in order to avoid future onerous measures,” emphasized the spokesman.
From 2025, the property tax for well over six million economic units in Bavaria will be calculated on a new assessment basis. The background is a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2018, according to which the previous assessment basis in Germany is unconstitutional.
In Bavaria, the recalculation is based on its own model, since the federal model is “too bureaucratic” for the government. In the negotiations between the federal and state governments, the Free State had enforced a state opening clause after a dispute with the federal government. While in the federal model the value of the property is to be determined on the basis of information such as the year of construction and the standard land value, a pure area model is implemented in Bavaria. The revenue from the property tax will remain with the municipalities in the future.