Shortly before the end of the final submission deadline, a good million property tax returns are still missing in Bavaria. Up to and including Wednesday, more than 5.3 million declarations were made electronically and on paper throughout Bavaria, as the Ministry of Finance announced on Thursday on request. This corresponds to more than 83 percent of the declarations to be made.
But now time is running out: Property owners only have a good ten days left. And that is an absolute exception: Bavaria was the only federal state to have extended the submission deadline for property tax returns by a further three months to April 30th. In fact, due to the Sunday and public holiday, it will now only end at the end of May 2nd. Originally, the deadline would have expired at the end of January, after a nationwide extension of three months. The end of October 2022 was originally planned.
The Free State had reacted to the slow submission of the declarations by the end of January by extending the deadline again. Shortly before the deadline at that time, data from almost a third of all property owners was still missing – although the rates were quite similar nationwide. Instead of 4.3 million declarations back then, there are now more than 5.3 million declarations in Bavaria.
From 2025 onwards, property tax in Bavaria will be calculated on a new assessment basis. The background is a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2018, according to which the previous assessment basis in Germany is unconstitutional.
In Bavaria, the recalculation is based on a separate model because the state government finds the federal model “too bureaucratic”. In the negotiations between the federal and state governments, the Free State had enforced a state opening clause. While in the federal model the value of the property is to be determined on the basis of information such as the year of construction and the standard land value, a pure area model is implemented in Bavaria. The revenue from the property tax will remain solely with the municipalities in the future.