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Detached houses in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: When will there be surcharges for delays and penalties?
Photo: Jens Büttner / DPA
For the vast majority of property owners in Germany, the deadline for submitting property tax returns expired on Tuesday.
Only in Bavaria do people have three months more time for this.
Many property tax returns are probably still missing.
Nationwide, 71.36 percent of the declarations were received, as a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Finance said on Monday.
If nothing fundamentally changed by midnight, the owners of more than ten million properties would have let the deadline pass.
A total of 36 million properties will have to be revalued for the planned reform.
The deadline had already been extended.
It was originally set for the end of October 2022.
Because of the slow receipt of the declarations, the deadline was then extended throughout Germany up to and including Tuesday (January 31).
New calculation should apply from 2025
If property tax returns are not submitted on time, the tax offices first want to write to defaulting property owners and point out the possible consequences.
As a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Finance Directorate said, a letter reminds you to submit the declaration and also points out that in the event of non-delivery, delay surcharges and penalty payments are possible.
If the defaulting owners do not react then, the tax offices would have to estimate the tax bases.
In addition, there is a specific risk of a surcharge of 25 euros per month and, under certain circumstances, a penalty payment of up to 25,000 euros, with which the levy is to be enforced.
Read more about this: Property tax return not done?
You are threatened now
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From 2025, the new property tax calculation should finally apply.
The Federal Constitutional Court had demanded this, because the tax offices recently calculated the value of a property on the basis of completely outdated data, from 1935 in East Germany and from 1964 in West Germany.
The tax authorities need data from all owners for the recalculation, even if they only own an allotment.
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