The property tax is one of the most important sources of income for cities and municipalities. Municipal and municipal tasks such as the renovation of schools, streets and playgrounds, libraries, fire brigades, hospitals or the expansion of infrastructure are financed with the property tax.
This property tax will be recalculated this year and will be due for the first time in 2025. However, there is no reason to sit back and put the submission of the necessary information on the “Resubmission” pile. Because the data on the basis of which the tax is levied will be collected this year – by autumn 2022. The long lead time is needed to re-record all properties in Germany. A mammoth bureaucratic task for around 35 million properties. In addition, the registration process with the ELSTER control program, which is used to record data, takes some time – if you are not already registered there.
This is made necessary by a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court from 2018, which brought about a reform of the property tax, since it may treat or tax similar properties differently and thus violate the principle of equal treatment anchored in the Basic Law (reason: the tax calculations of the federal states are based partly on values from the 1960s or even older).
Affected are:
- Owners of privately used, commercial, agricultural or forestry property (property tax A, B + in the future supplemented by property tax C, for the possibility of taxing previously undeveloped property at a higher rate) and are legally obliged to participate in the revaluation process.
- all owners of condominiums, who are also obliged to submit the relevant data.
Important to note: The deadline is January 1st, 2022. This means that in the case of a sale during the year, the owner who was in the land register on January 1st, 2022 must submit the declaration of determination.
If an owner does not follow this procedure, a penalty payment may be imposed and the tax office is entitled to estimate the tax base. One can assume that the pendulum of such an estimate will not swing in favor of the taxpayer and that more costs will have to be paid.
What to do NOW?
With a few exceptions, the declaration must be submitted electronically/online via ELSTER (Electronic Tax Declaration) in the “my ELSTER” section.
Registration/login at ELSTER:
Those who are already registered can use their personal access. All others proceed as follows:
For the free registration at ELSTER you need:
- Your personal data, including your tax identification number.
Attention, this ID no. is not with to confuse your tax number. It has eleven digits and will replace the tax number for income tax in the long term. So it’s worth looking for it, then you’ll have it ready later. 🙂
FĂĽr Privatpersonen stehen vier Anmeldeoptionen zur VerfĂĽgung.
At elster.de click on the “User Account Create for the new registration “ button. You get the certificate file at the end of the process. Then select yourself as a private person and which option you want to register with. Then enter the required data such as name, ID number, e-mail address and user name, which can be freely selected, and press “Send”. If everything is correct, you will receive an e-mail , which is used to confirm your email address. After a short time you will receive a second email with a so-called activation ID. Do not delete this mail or the ID, you will need them later, because now you have to wait for mail from ELSTER, which will be sent to you automatically. That can take a little longer. The content of this letter is an additional activation code. With these two codes you can now complete the registration. To do this, use the link from the second e-mail.
So, now click on the link and enter the two activation information – the ID from the e-mail and the code from the letter. If everything fits, a certificate file is automatically created on the computer, which is to be saved in a “safe” location.
Now it’s almost done, because now you have to select the certificate file for security and log in with your assigned password.
If everything has been ok up to now, you are now a successful “ELSTERian” and can submit the “Declaration on the determination of the property tax value” online from July 1st, 2022.
What information is required to determine the new property tax?
- Location of the property or the farm and forestry operation
- Property Type
- Land area
- Land reference value
- Land area or living space
- Co-ownership share (numerator/denominator)
- Co-ownership share
- Year of construction of the building
- possibly Number of garage/underground parking spaces.
- possibly Obligation to DiscontinueÂ
The corresponding data can be found, for example, in the purchase contract, in the cadastral map, in the land registry, in the assessment of the assessed value, the assessment of property tax or in the declaration of division. Incidentally, the extract from the land register costs a fee and, of course, time.
So use the time, because after summer comes autumn.
