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A. Employee tax assessment ("annual tax declaration")

Employee tax assessment without application

Under certain circumstances, an "employee tax assessment without application" is provided. The aim is to ensure that citizens who are entitled to a tax refund but do not apply for it are automatically assessed, unless they have waived their right to carry out the employee tax assessment without application. The tax refund of at least € 5 resulting from this assessment will then be credited to your account without any further action on your part, if it is known to the tax administration. However, this employee tax assessment without application is legally subject to certain requirements:

  • You are not subject to mandatory assessment (see page 166)
  • You have not filed a tax return for the previous assessment year by June 30th
  • Throughout the calendar year, you have received income only from employment.
  • From the information provided to the tax office (pay slips), it is to be assumed that assessment will lead to a tax refund (e.g. when working a holiday job only during the summer months)

If you should disagree with the result of this "automatic" assessment (e.g. because deductions, such as income-related expenses or special expenses, have been disregarded because they were not known to the tax office), you have the option of filing a declaration for employee tax assessment within five years (Form L 1). This means that the decision issued is automatically cancelled, and an employee tax assessment is performed on the basis of your tax return.

When can employee tax assessment be requested?

For the application for employee tax assessment, you have five years (e.g. the application for 2024 may be submitted to the end of December 2029). You can either submit your application electronically via FinanzOnline, send it by letter mail with Form L 1 (optionally with Attachment L 1ab, L 1d, L 1k, L 1i), or personally present it to your tax office. The tax office processes the applications in the order of their arrival and performs an employee tax assessment upon your request.

Note

After submission of your employee tax assessment, enquiries by telephone will not speed up the processing!

Please indicate your bank details only if they are not yet known to your tax office or have changed. Due to the introduction of a uniform standard for European payment transactions, now only BIC (Bank Identifier Code) and IBAN (International Bank Account Number) are used. You can find these codes (BIC, IBAN) on your bank statement and on your bank card. The tax office can complete an employee tax assessment only if all pay slips for the year and other disclosures (e.g. from the Labour Market Service) and data (e.g. donations, church tax payments) have been received.

Note

Do not enclose any pay slip with your tax return, nor any receipts (invoices, confirmations, vouchers) for income-related expenses, special expenses or extraordinary burdens. However, please keep these documents for seven years, since they must be shown to the tax office upon request.