Final sprint for property tax: Real estate owners only have until the end of January to submit their declarations – many millions still have to deliver. As a survey among the countries showed, the rate of declarations made so far is currently in a range of around 60 to around 70 percent. Most of this was received electronically. Nationwide, around 66 percent of the declarations were made on Thursday, as a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Finance said. There has obviously been a sharp increase in returns in the past few days, as it was said in Berlin, for example. A spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Finance said that experience has shown that deadlines are often used as far as possible.
In mid-October, the federal states had extended the submission deadline from the end of October to the end of January 2023 due to the slow receipt of the new property tax returns from the tax authorities. There is no renewed deadline extension. Lower Saxony’s Finance Minister Gerald Heere (Greens), for example, said that this was not possible. The tax authorities must evaluate the majority of the properties by the end of 2023 so that the municipalities have the necessary basis for collecting property taxes from 2025 in good time. The NRW Ministry of Finance said that if the submission deadline were to be extended, the property tax revenue of the cities and municipalities in 2025 would be at risk. For the tax offices, the time still available to determine the property tax values is scarce. When the deadline expires, the tax offices will first send out reminders, as the Schleswig-Holstein Finance Minister Monika Heinold (Greens) said. The tax authorities then also have the option of levying surcharges for delays and penalties and making estimates.