Meaning – the difference between me being taxed with class4 and not with class3 meant 450 euros every month. When we moved here, we moved on my working visa, so my partner didn’t have an income at all. I moved here with my partner in February, while we were already married.Īt the Burgeramt, initially, they made a mistake to tax us both as tax class #4 (I personally thought it is done automatically per income). My question is, are there different types of marriage recognition processes, Reply
We have been instructed to contact numerous tax offices, yet getting the same unknown response.Ĭould you provide any valuable advice to this complicated matter, I have raised this issue with the Bürgerbüro but I am not getting a clear and concise answer.
I am not sure how the registration works with my Wife’s tax class either, as I am not a resident yet and I assume we cannot change to 3/5 or be automatically reconfigured to 4/4 if I do not have working rights. I am sceptical that the process is not being done correctly, as I assumed we needed to do more to get our marriage formally recognised in Germany. We did not require anything other than our Polish wedding certificate and passports. My wife and I have been to the Bürgerbüro to register our marriage. I have no other residential or citizen history with any other European nation. I am in the process of applying for a family reunification visa. I am registered in Munich however I am not a resident of Germany. I am an Australian citizen and have recently married a Polish citizen who has been living in Germany for 6 years. If both partners are employees and you have been through a tax class change in Germany, it is mandatory to submit a tax declaration (Steuererklärung more info this way) after the end of the year (e.g: do one in 2022 for the year 2021, if you changed in 2021)įantastic website, great stuff.So that’s when you can see a difference in your net salary. The tax class change will happen on the month following the request submission.4th page is about stating what your current tax class combination is, and which one you want to switch to.Ignore 3rd page if you do this application yourself.Select the year for which this should take place (you can select the current year if application is sent before the last day of November).Login with your Elster account an d head to this form.
Alternatively, you can download an empty PDF file here. You can fill it online on the official finance ministry website this way When you have filled both pages in, you can download it as a PDF.
How to change tax classes in Germany Offline with a form They should earn at least 60% of the total household income.Įmployees can calculate how tax classes impact their net income with this German salary calculator. The higher-earner in the household has to earn a good deal more for this to make sense. When is it worth to change classes in that case? As a result, moving from tax class 4 to tax class 3/5 might increase the net salary for the higher earner. The idea here is to allow for a tax rebate when one of the partners earns significantly less than the other.
It’s quite simple really: the German tax system knows that the higher-earner is often bearing more of the costs in the household. However, for a lot of households, this is often not the best solution. By default, the Finanzamt will put both partners in tax class 4, when you first register your marriage or marry in Germany. The class used for additional jobs (Nebenjob or Zweitjob)Īttention married people: you can save moneyĪs you can see, married people can belong to different classes and optimize differently. You are married with a lower income (than your partner in Steuerklasse 3) You are married with both equivalent income You are married with a higher income (than your partner in Steuerklasse 5) You are single, widow(er), separated/divorced Self-employed are paying income tax through other means. In other words, your net salary is directly related to your tax class in Germany.Īs you might have already guessed it this is only relevant to employees. This impacts how much wage tax (“Lohnsteuerabzug”), solidarity contribution (“Solidaritätszuschlag”) and Church tax (“Kirchensteuer”) will be taken from your gross salary.
This will help your employer apply the correct tax rate on your payslip, hence the name “Lohnsteuerklasse”. Depending on this, you will be put in different categories by the Finanzamt. In nutshell your tax class in Germany is more or less defined by your marital status.