Property tax reform: Associations demand that only provisional assessments be issued

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New housing estate in North Rhine-Westphalia: Property owners have to deliver

Photo: Henning Kaiser / dpa

The final sprint for property tax is underway: Property owners still have to submit their declarations in January.

An alliance of associations has now positioned itself against the property tax reform in a joint statement.

According to "Bild", the letter from the Association of Taxpayers (BdSt), the German Tax Union (DSTG), the German Association of Tax Advisors (DStV) and the Association of Owners House & Reason available to the newspaper (Monday).

"A number of objections and lawsuits are already pending, which - due to constitutional concerns - are again directed against the calculation methods of the new property tax," said Reiner Holznagel, President of the Taxpayers' Association.

(Read here what an expert advises owners. )

Owners are hoping for a decision from the courts

If the judicial clarification shows the unconstitutionality, "this could apply to all decisions and not just for those owners who have already contested their decisions by means of an objection," said Kai Warnecke, President of the Haus & Grund owners' association, the "Bild".

The Federal Constitutional Court had called for a reform because the tax offices recently calculated the value of a property on the basis of completely outdated data.

The declared goal of the alliance is to prevent a wave of objections and thus provide all owners with security and to relieve the financial administration and tax consultants, the associations justified their initiative shortly before the deadline.

Tax consultants feel overwhelmed

Florian Köbler, head of the tax union DSTG, warned of the consequences of the reform.

"Both the financial administration and the tax consultants are already at their limit because of the property tax reform and the federal government's relief packages." It is to be feared that the processing times for income tax returns will be longer and taxpayers will have to wait longer for the tax refund.

Shortly before the deadline, millions of declarations are missing

As a survey by the dpa news agency in the federal states showed, the rate of statements made was in a range of around 60 to around 70 percent up to last Thursday.

Most of this was received electronically.

In mid-October, the federal states had extended the submission deadline from the end of October to the end of January 2023 due to the slow receipt of the new property tax returns from the tax authorities.

mmq/dpa