Status: 07.01.2023 09:42 a.m
Millions of property tax returns, the taxation of aid payments from relief packages: the tax offices are currently suffering from a processing backlog. According to the German Tax Union, this is just a foretaste of 2023.
According to a newspaper report, the processing times for tax returns in the tax offices have increased again for the first time in years. Last year, the German tax authorities needed an average of 54 days to issue a tax assessment and thus five days more than in 2021, as the “Welt am Sonntag” reports, citing an evaluation of the online tax portal Lohnsteuer Kompakt.
Accordingly, it is the first increase in processing time since 2018. According to “Welt am Sonntag”, the average values are based on almost 400,000 tax returns that were created last year via the online tax portal.
According to the report, the Berlin financial administration worked the fastest last year. Here, an average of 46 days passed before the decision was made, in Hamburg it was 47 days. In Bremen, on the other hand, citizens would have had to wait an average of 82 days.
Three months waiting time
For the head of the German Tax Union, Florian Köbler, the delays are just a foretaste of the year that has just begun. “In 2023, the average processing time for tax returns will increase dramatically,” Köbler told the newspaper. The employees in many tax offices could not keep up with the processing. “Even now, up to 50 percent more declarations are piling up in the tax offices than at the same time last year,” Koebler told the “Welt am Sonntag”. In some regions, the waiting time is already three months. Normally, the processing takes only half as long.
Property tax returns are an additional burden for offices
From Köbler’s point of view, the reason for this is the 36 million property tax returns that would have to be processed by the offices and put a strain on the tax administration. In addition, there will be more income tax returns, since aid payments from the relief packages would have to be taxed.
Uncertain citizens also kept the employees from their actual work with questions. According to the “Welt am Sonntag”, the Federal Ministry of Finance is also expecting further delays for citizens this year. “Increasing processing times can probably still be expected in 2023,” the ministry said.