A little more clarity on property tax

Created: 09/01/2022, 08:57

By: Sabine Kuhn

According to the area model, land will be taxed in Bavaria in the future.

symbol © mm archive

Halfway through the deadline for the new property tax.

13 percent of citizens who have to make a declaration in Bavaria by the end of October have done so so far.

The rest are still tinkering - and keep stumbling over the same questions.

Michael Finkenzellner, deputy head of the Brucker tax office, answers the most important ones.

Why is a property tax return required?

The Federal Constitutional Court has classified the previous calculation bases as unconstitutional.

The legislator must now regulate this anew, according to Finkenzellner.

The purpose of submitting the declaration is to ensure that the property tax can be levied by the city or municipality in whose area the property or agricultural and forestry business is located.

Who gets the revenue?

All of the revenue goes to the municipalities.

Why do you have to provide information that the tax office supposedly has?

The tax administration does not have the data required to calculate the new assessment basis, or it is not complete or not always in the current version, as Finkenzellner emphasizes.

For example, parcels of land from the real estate cadastre are not to be equated with the economic unit relevant for property tax.

Only the information in the tax returns that is truthful and given to the best of our knowledge and belief forms a reliable data basis for taxation.

The taxpayer has to painstakingly copy numbers from the land register pages.

They are available at the district courts.

Couldn't the citizens at least be spared this hard work?

A direct transfer of data, for example from the real estate cadastre, is not possible, Finkenzeller asserts: These relate to parcels.

The scope of the economic units is decisive for the calculation of the property tax.

Such a parcel can consist of several parcels or just parts of it.

A taxpayer can also have several economic entities or be involved in several.

And what about the building surfaces?

The data on this is not always available to the tax offices in the current version.

The tax offices are not aware of many of the construction activities of the last few decades that did not require a planning application.

Another decisive factor for property tax is how the building area is used - for living or for other purposes.

Only taxpayers can provide information on actual current use.

Is the declaration now required a great effort?

In Bavaria it can be done with just a few details.

The data required for this is usually easy to determine, since the Bavarian property tax model is based solely on areas and the type of building use.

Is property tax going up?

That depends very much on the assessment rate of the respective municipality.

The municipality is expected to redefine this in 2024.

According to the will of the Bavarian state government, the assessment rate should be revenue-neutral.

Means: The property tax revenue of a municipality should not be higher after the reform than before.

However, individual shifts in the burden between taxpayers are unavoidable.

Do you have to state ground values?

no

The value of the property plays no role in the new Bavarian property tax model.

For agricultural land, the total yield metric is also important.

This can be found in the BayernAtlas property tax.

Are there other advantages of the Bavarian model?

Unlike the federal model, a property tax return only has to be submitted once.

With real estate prices rising, there is no such thing as backdoor property tax increases.

In the forms, the coding is 03 for women and 02 for men. Is that up to date?

The order of the salutation codes in the context of specifying the (co-)owners does not represent an evaluative ranking. The salutation code to be entered in the forms helps to identify and clearly allocate all declaration data.

The correct combination of the data from the main form with the values ​​from the annexes that are decisive for the tax assessment is essential for the correct implementation of the taxation procedure.

Do clear words have to be translated into a number system that also confuses when filling them out?

All Bavarian property tax return forms were checked for citizen-friendly language before publication and designed to be as citizen-friendly as possible.

The property tax return as well as the forms for all other tax returns are the result of the relevant legal requirements.

These require a legally secure formulation.

Therefore, the use of legal terms in forms is unfortunately often unavoidable.

How do I submit a property tax return?

Either electronically via the ELSTER online tax office, or as a gray PDF form that you can download to fill out on your computer from www.grundsteuer.bayern.de and then print out.

There is also the option of filling out a green paper form by hand.

This can be picked up in the tax offices or town halls.

How does the tax administration support the submission of the property tax return?

The fields are explained in detail in the instructions for completing the forms.

Information and explanatory videos are available at www.grundsteuer.bayern.de or at www.elster.de under the item “How can I find help?” You can also access the real estate cadastre (BayernAtlas- property tax) access.