Bavaria is single-handedly extending the deadline for filing property tax returns.
Property owners should have three months more time, i.e. until the end of April, as Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) said on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting in Munich.
Originally, the deadline for submitting the new property tax returns was the end of October 2022.
This period was then extended throughout Germany up to and including January 31st.
This Tuesday is the deadline for submitting property tax returns in all federal states except Bavaria.
It is unclear whether other state governments will follow the Bavarian decision in the short term.
Before the cabinet meeting, Füracker had said that no one would have to expect sanctions for not submitting the property tax return on time.
“No one has to worry about a penalty coming tomorrow.
Not even for the next few days or weeks, ”said Füracker on Tuesday on Bayerischer Rundfunk.
The property tax reform is a requirement of the Federal Constitutional Court and not an idea of politicians.
Therefore, it does not depend on one day or the other, he emphasized.
Millions of property tax returns are still missing
Shortly before the end of the filing deadline, millions of property tax returns are still missing.
As a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday in Berlin, around 71.36 percent of the declarations had been received nationwide by Monday.
Of these, 61.93 percent were transmitted electronically.
In addition, an estimated 9.43 percent of the declarations were received on a paper form nationwide.
From 2025, the new property tax calculation should apply.
The Federal Constitutional Court had demanded this, because the tax offices recently calculated the value of a property on the basis of completely outdated data, from 1935 in East Germany and from 1964 in West Germany.
Almost 36 million properties now have to be revalued for the recalculation.