Tax return
Submitted deadline? What you can do
Tax offices require the tax return for 2024 until July 31. How to avoid serious trouble with the tax authorities despite the failure of the deadline.
On July 31, the deadline for submitting the income tax return for the past year ends. That sounds final. Previously, a letter to the tax office was often sufficient, an application for extension. And you usually had a few weeks more time. The offices have been rejecting the most applications since 2019 – qua amendment to the law. Only delay without your own fault is accepted.
Late tax return can be expensive
Even more: the tax authorities can charge a delay surcharge. Unlike in the past, the legally stipulated and is 0.25 percent of the stuck tax. At least 25 euros per month after the deadline, a maximum of 25,000 euros. Whether the contract is due is at the discretion of the tax offices. Only those who are very late, namely more than 14 months after the end of the tax year, you have to pay a surcharge for the late delivery.
It can be really violent for notorious refusers. Anyone who does not submit their tax return at risk of compulsory money or even imprisonment. However, the so -called compulsory replacement must impose the local district court. It takes a maximum of two weeks and does not lead to an entry in the criminal record. But: The tax return must still be submitted. The last remedy of the tax authorities: The tax is estimated.
So no mercy for advertisingers? Not necessarily. Anyone who can refrain from creating the explanation in good time should quickly turn on professional help. If tax advice or the local income tax aid association is commissioned, the deadline is extended – for the tax return 2024 until April 30, 2026.
Previous trick: prefer to throw an incomplete tax return in the mailbox of the tax office before the deadline or send it online using the Elster procedure. That shows good will. And motivated to submit missing information.
From circles of tax practice, it is also said that the tax offices mostly do without a delay surcharge a few days after the deadline. Tax muffles that are not obliged to submit an explanation, such as single workers with tax class 1 without rental or lease income, the tax authorities are even further accommodating: they can retroact the tax returns up to four years retrospectively.
FD
Source: Stern
