C. Income-related expenses
What are income-related expenses?
An employee incurs income-related expenses in the form of expenses or expenditures that are related to his/her job. They are therefore directly connected to the work provided by an employee.
Certain income-related expenses such as, for example, statutory social security contributions, Chamber contributions to chambers and contributions to promote housing construction are automatically settled by the employer when deducting wage tax. The service fee for your "e-card" (electronic social security identification) is also a statutory contribution, which is deducted automatically in the course of payroll accounting.
Income-related expenses with effect on tax will reduce income tax payments by the amount of the respective marginal tax rate. You can claim the lump sum for commuters from your employer. If you have failed to do so, you can still claim it from the tax office in the course of an employee tax assessment. Other income-related expenses may also be claimed subsequently from the tax office in the course of an employee tax assessment.
What are the essential features of income-related expenses?
As a rule, it must be possible to provide evidence of income-related expenses (invoices, vehicle log). If no proof can be furnished for the type and amount of the expense, substantiation is sufficient.
Note
Please do not enclose documents with the tax return. However, please keep these documents for seven years, since they must be shown to the tax office upon request.
What is the lump sum for income-related expenses?
Every active employee is entitled to a lump sum for income-related expenses to the amount of €132 per year. This lump sum is already included in the wage tax tables and is deducted from the tax base for wage tax irrespective of whether income-related expenses are actually incurred.
The following income-related expenses, which are incurred most frequently, therefore reduce the tax payment only if their total amount is more than €132 per year:
- Work clothes
- Tools and equipment
- Work room
- Cost of basic, further and re-training
- Works council contribution
- Computer
- Double budgeting and family home trips
- Specialised literature
- Bicycle
- Travel costs
- Risk money
- Internet
- Motor vehicle
- Language courses
- Study trips
- Telephone, mobile phone