Because of the mail
That will change in 2025 when it comes to tax assessments
Updated on December 25, 2024Reading time: 2 minutes
The tax assessment provides information about whether you will pay back taxes or receive a refund. There will be an encouraging change in the new year.
Anyone who wants to lodge an objection or lawsuit against a tax assessment must adhere to clear deadlines. From 2025, a crucial rule will change, the Taxpayers' Association announced. The previous so-called three-day fiction becomes four-day fiction. This means: In the future, tax assessments will be deemed to be announced one day later – an adjustment to slower postal delivery times.
With the passage of the Postal Law Modernization Act in the summer, Deutsche Post now has less strict delivery times for letters. Because shipments could therefore generally arrive later, the legislature also takes this into account when fictitiously delivering mail and turns the three-day into a four-day fiction. According to the Taxpayers' Association, this also applies to notices sent electronically.
If the fictitious delivery day falls on a weekend or a public holiday, the announcement will be postponed to the next working day. And: Anyone who can prove that a postal item was actually received later than the three or four day fiction should inform the tax office because they then have to take the later receipt into account, advises Daniela Karbe-Geßler from the Taxpayers' Association.
Good to know: If you file an objection against your tax assessment, this does not exempt you from having to pay claims from the tax office – so-called additional claims. The objection to the tax assessment has no suspensory effect. However, there is an exception to a payment deferral: you request that enforcement be suspended for the time being.
If your appeal is successful, you will receive a refund of all or part of the additional claim. However, if the objection is not successful, you will have to pay the additional payment plus interest. Read here exactly how to file an objection against a tax assessment.
