He had hinted at it for a long time, now Finance Minister Christian Lindner is pushing ahead with his proposal. The finance minister suggested that property owners in Germany should only have to submit their property tax returns a few months later than on October 31, as has been the case up to now. People currently have other and bigger concerns, “that’s why the pressure on taxpayers shouldn’t be too great now,” says Lindner. He now wants to talk to the federal states about his idea. In the end, they have to decide on the extension, but they are not impressed by Lindner’s initiative, which has not been agreed. NRW Finance Minister Marcus Optendrenk, for example, says it would be more effective if Lindner had first sought talks with the state finance ministers “instead of communicating such announcements via the press”.
Should the deadline actually be delayed, it would probably be a relief for many people. But it would also be a further setback for the urgently needed property tax reform. Because for more than four years it has been clear that the property tax in its current form is unconstitutional. In order to remedy this, all landowners should have submitted a new property tax return since July 2022. They are the basis for revaluing a total of 36 million properties in Germany. Only then can the municipalities set the property tax due that property owners should pay from 2025 onwards. If the explanations come later, the rest of the process is likely to be postponed.
Only a quarter to a third of all declarations have arrived so far, as the Treasury Department has had to admit. Many people simply despaired of the complicated forms or the fact that the nationwide tax platform “Elster” collapsed due to the new declaration and in some cases was even switched off completely. Lindner also admitted in the early start program on ntv and RTL that older landowners in particular felt overwhelmed with the tax return. There are also software problems.
The fact that Lindner publicly announced an extension of the submission deadline caused anger in North Rhine-Westphalia. Because the previous deadline at the end of October goes back to a decision by the federal states. Marcus Optendrenk from the CDU suggests that “we should first wait and see how things develop and agree on a uniform line at federal and state level”. At the next conference of finance ministers, they want to vote on the subject anyway, according to Optendrenk. “There is no reason to jump ahead of these talks and act frantically.”
The fact that a reform of the property tax is necessary at all goes back to a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in November 2019. At that time, Karlsruhe found that the assessment values for properties in western and eastern Germany were outdated. The Bundestag and Bundesrat then agreed on a reform that will now result in a revaluation of a total of 36 million properties throughout Germany. If Lindner prevails, it should take a while.