Property tax: Fear of rising costs by 2800 percent - taxpayers' association wants to sue
Created: 11/23/2022, 4:17 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
Nobody can yet say how high the new property tax will be from 2025.
(Archive image) © Martin Schutt/dpa
The anger about the reform of the property tax does not stop.
According to a report, numerous owners in Baden-Württemberg are now worried about an explosive increase in property tax from 2025.
Stuttgart – Owners still have time to submit their property tax returns until the end of January.
But there is already confusion and anger about the course of the property tax reform.
Nobody can say how high the new property tax will be - but some owners in Baden-Württemberg are concerned that there could be a cost explosion.
Property tax in Baden-Württemberg: trouble about land value
The news portal
focus.de
has received reports from a dozen property owners in Baden-Württemberg who, according to calculations, will pay between 700 and 2800 percent more property tax after the property tax reform.
Rural regions are particularly affected.
This is probably due in large part to the model for calculating the property tax that Baden-Württemberg uses.
In this case, the land area and the standard land value play a major role in the tax calculation.
And that same standard land value becomes a bone of contention.
The floor value reflects the average location value of the floor in euros per square meter within a specific area.
Information about the type of property, the living and usable area or the year of construction is not required in the Ländle.
This leads to distortions, as Andrea Schmid-Förster from the Taxpayers' Association in Stuttgart explains to
focus.de
.
"There are many cases where parts of the property may not be built on at all, but it is still rated as high-priced building land overall." But with the Baden-Württemberg model, the land alone is still decisive.
It doesn't matter whether grandma's house is on the property, a state-of-the-art villa or a rented apartment building.
Property tax: Owner fears cost increase of 2800 percent
In an extreme example, an owner fears that the tax burden for his property in northern Baden-Württemberg will increase by 2800 percent.
According to the land register entry, the property is divided into a piece of residential development and a piece of agricultural land, reports
focus.de.
The latter area costs 75 euros in property tax per year, the built-up area 1329 euros.
The property owner reports to the news portal that everything is suddenly marked as a residential building area with a land value of 780 euros in the land value map.
"The new property tax would then be 2151 euros for the agricultural area instead of 75 euros, i.e. 2857 percent more.
Both together should then cost a total of 4352 euros in property tax from 2025 instead of 1400 euros a year.”
also read
One-time payments for families, tenants, owners: there is so much money from the state now
SizzleBrothers & Bergader - Winter BBQ event live on Twitch
The Taxpayers' Association of Baden-Württemberg is therefore planning to file a model lawsuit against the new property tax law in the federal state.
"The owners of large properties are clearly the losers," says Schmid-Förster
focus.de
.
Many of those affected would have to live on small pensions.
However, the Ministry of Finance of Baden-Württemberg emphasizes to the news portal that nobody can say how high the property tax will be from 2025, since the local authorities' assessment rates are still missing.
It is assumed that these will lower the assessment rate if the standard land value rises.
"Calculation aids on the Internet with old assessment rates are therefore not serious," said the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Finance.
With material from the dpa
