Munich (dpa / lby) – As in other federal states, the submission of the property tax return in Bavaria is progressing extremely slowly. “Up to and including December 28, 2022, more than 3.1 million property tax returns were submitted throughout Bavaria (electronically and on paper). This corresponds to around 48.6 percent of the property tax returns to be submitted,” said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Finance on Thursday at the request of the German Press Agency in Munich. The proportion of electronically submitted property tax returns in Bavaria is currently more than 70 percent.
From 2025, the property tax for more than six million economic units throughout Bavaria will be calculated on a new assessment basis. The background to this is a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2018, according to which the previous assessment basis in Germany was declared unconstitutional.
In Bavaria, the recalculation is based on a separate model because the state government finds the federal model “too bureaucratic”. In the negotiations between the federal and state governments, the Free State had pushed through a state opening clause after a long dispute with the federal government. While the value of the property is to be taken into account in the federal model based on information such as the year of construction and the standard land value, a pure area model is being implemented in Bavaria. The state government hopes that this will result in less bureaucracy.
The revenue from the property tax will remain entirely with the municipalities in the future. These finance important public services such as infrastructure, childcare, playgrounds and cultural facilities. The municipalities need the property tax amounts to be determined by the tax authorities as early as possible in order to be able to set their assessment rates for the new property tax that will apply from 2025 and to be able to send the assessments.
Property owners have until January 31, 2023 to submit their tax return to the responsible tax office. This can be done electronically or in writing using a form. The submission deadline was originally set for the end of October 2022, but this deadline had already been extended throughout Germany.
