Germany: the Einkommensteuererklärung after a year of Lohnsteuer
German payroll withholds on assumptions. Your employer's Lohnsteuer allows every employee the same Arbeitnehmer-Pauschbetrag of €1,230 for work costs and a deemed Vorsorgepauschale for insurance, and knows nothing of your commute, your donations or the cleaner you pay. The Einkommensteuererklärung replaces those assumptions with your own figures and works the year again on the § 32a tariff. Whatever you can show beyond the flat amounts comes back, at your marginal rate, together with the Solidaritätszuschlag and Kirchensteuer that rode on it.
The deductions that most often decide the result are the Entfernungspauschale, €0.38 for each kilometre of the one-way distance and each day you travelled (for 2025, €0.30 for the first 20 kilometres), and the Homeoffice-Pauschale of €6 for each day worked at home, at most €1,260. Both count only once your work costs together pass €1,230. Health and care contributions are deductible almost in full, which usually uses up the €1,900 cap on other insurance, so unemployment insurance adds nothing. Donations, church tax paid and 20% of the labour cost of household services and tradespeople follow.
Couples are taxed together on the Splittingtarif, twice the tax on half their joint income, for the whole year of the wedding too. Payroll only follows from the month the new tax class applies, and an employer may not settle the year itself once the class changed, so the months before come back through the return. For children, the Finanzamt compares the Kinderfreibeträge with the Kindergeld child by child, and deducts them only where they save more, adding the Kindergeld to the tax in return.
Lohnsteuer withheld in tax class I, twelve monthly pays of €4,166.66: €6,786.96.
Work costs: 30 km × 220 days × €0.38 = €2,508, plus 40 days at home × €6 = €240 and €300 of equipment, €3,048, which replaces the €1,230 Pauschbetrag.
Insurance: pension €4,650, health and care €5,400. Taxable income: €50,000 − €3,048 − €4,650 − €5,400 − €36 = €36,866, on which the 2026 tariff charges €6,234.
Refund: €6,786.96 − €6,234 = €552.96.
Arbeitslosengeld, Elterngeld and Krankengeld are tax-free but raise the rate on the rest of your income, the Progressionsvorbehalt, so a year with them often ends with tax to pay.
Filing is through ELSTER. If you must file, because a couple who both earn chose classes III and V, a Freibetrag was registered, or you had more than €410 of other income or of those benefits, the 2025 return is due by 31 July 2026, or 1 March 2027 with a Steuerberater or Lohnsteuerhilfeverein. Everyone else files voluntarily and has four years: the 2025 return can go in until 31 December 2029, and one that would show tax owed need not be filed at all.