Berlin/Munich (dpa/lby) – According to a media report, only relatively few owners of private property have submitted their property tax returns – in Bavaria, just 11.6 percent. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” (“F.A.S.”) refers to its own survey among the federal states. So far, depending on the country, the submission rate has been slightly above or even below 10 percent of the expected declarations. The deadline for submissions is July 1st to October 31st, so it’s almost halfway through.
The so-called declaration of determination is related to the property tax reform that was decided more than two years ago. From 2025, a new property tax calculation will apply. Before that, almost 36 million properties in Germany have to be revalued. This is done on the basis of the information that the owners now have to submit. In mid-July, technical difficulties arose with the “Elster” control platform; she was temporarily unavailable. The Federal Chamber of Tax Advisors and the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce as well as some state politicians then demanded an extension of the deadline.
According to the report, the fewest taxes have been in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with a rate of 4.2 percent. Brandenburg is 5.2 percent. Berlin comes to 6.7, Thuringia to 7.4 and Saxony to 7.6 percent. Saxony-Anhalt and Hamburg are on par with 8.9 percent. It is followed by Saarland (9.5 percent) and Baden-Württemberg (9.6 percent).
In six countries, the tax rate is over 10 percent. Hessen is the best with 13.9 percent. Lower Saxony (12.7 percent), Schleswig-Holstein (11.9 percent) and Bavaria (11.6 percent) follow. Bremen comes to 10.4 and Rhineland-Palatinate to 10.6 percent. According to the report, North Rhine-Westphalia did not provide any data.
According to “FAS.” the figures of the individual federal states are not completely comparable, because some paper declarations or real estate tax declarations for agricultural land are included and the key dates vary slightly.
The federal states are not yet alarmed about the tax quotas: It is understandable that, in view of the summer and holiday season, many taxpayers took advantage of the deadline, wrote the Hamburg tax authority to the “FAS.” Schleswig-Holstein’s finance minister Monika Heinold (Greens) told the newspaper: “Experience shows that the dynamics of filing tax returns always increase significantly when the deadlines come to an end.”
