By the end of 2023, the Bavarian tax authorities have already processed almost 77 percent of the new property tax returns. In total, around five million so-called main findings have been completed, the Ministry of Finance said at the request of the German Press Agency. At the turn of the year, around 6.2 million declarations for the recalculation of property tax had already been submitted – out of a total of around 6.5 million declarations in Bavaria. However, it is conceivable that there were also multiple transmissions. “The work on the main determination is on schedule,” said a spokesman.
Unlike in all other federal states, the deadline for submitting applications did not end in January 2023, but only at the end of May 2, 2023. “Given the fact that property tax is a new law, the owners Those who have not yet submitted their tax return should first be reminded of their obligation to submit their tax return. All those affected are advised to submit their tax return as quickly as possible.”
The Ministry of Finance emphasized again that “according to the declared political will of the Bavarian state government” a municipality’s property tax revenue should not be higher after the reform than before. However, the dispatch of property tax notices and the determination of the assessment rate are fundamentally a free decision of the respective municipality and are also “their exclusive responsibility. The Basic Law guarantees this assessment rate autonomy of the municipalities.” It went on to say that the property tax law does not specify a minimum or maximum percentage for the assessment rate. “The property tax reform hasn’t changed anything about this.”
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, according to which the current assessment basis in Germany is unconstitutional. In Bavaria, the new calculation is based on its own model because the state government found the federal model “too bureaucratic”. While the federal model is intended to determine the value of the property based on information such as the year of construction and the standard land value, a pure area model is implemented in Bavaria. In the future, the income from property taxes will remain solely with the municipalities.