The German tax return: why it almost always pays

Why money comes back

Monthly wage tax works with lump sums: €1,230 for work expenses, €36 for special expenses. Whoever spends more has paid too much tax. A 20-kilometre commute on 220 days alone creates €1,584 of travel costs, plus home office, equipment, training. The refund is not a gift but a repayment.

The items that count

Work-related expenses: commuting at 30 cents per kilometre, 38 cents from the 21st kilometre, home office allowance of €6 a day up to €1,260, equipment such as laptop, desk and specialist literature, training, application costs, professional associations, account fees. Special expenses: contributions to pension and basic health and care insurance, Riester, donations, church tax, childcare up to €4,800, school fees. Extraordinary burdens: medical costs, care, maintenance, disability allowance. Household services and tradesmen: 20 percent of labour costs directly off the tax, up to €4,000 and €1,200 of savings respectively.

Who must file

Filing is mandatory with tax class III/V or IV with factor, side income above €410, wage replacement benefits such as parental allowance, short-time work or unemployment benefit above €410, registered allowances, several employers at once, capital income without withholding tax, and always for the self-employed. The deadline for mandatory returns is 31 July of the following year, with a tax adviser the end of February of the year after that.

Voluntary, four years back

Whoever does not have to may still file, four years back. In 2026 you can still submit the return for 2022. Whoever has never filed often recovers several thousand euros with four returns at once. Voluntary returns cannot lead to a back payment: if one appears, you withdraw the return within the objection period.

How it works in practice

Register with Mein ELSTER; the certificate arrives by post and takes two weeks. The pre-filled return fetches salary, insurance and pensions automatically. You add work expenses, tradesmen’s invoices and donations. Keep receipts but only send them on request. Simple cases take two hours; commercial software guides you through questions and costs €20 to €40, itself deductible.

The most common mistakes

Forgetting the home office allowance, claiming the commute only one way instead of with the distance allowance, paying tradesmen in cash (then not deductible), not collecting training and specialist books, not checking joint assessment for married couples. And the deadline: whoever misses a mandatory filing pays a late surcharge of at least €25 a month.