As a domestic employer, you are obliged to withhold income tax from every wage payment to your employees. You must register the withheld wage tax with your competent tax office and pay the wage tax.

You must submit the wage tax registration to your tax office on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.

The income tax registration period is
- generally the calendar month,
- the calendar quarter if the wage tax to be paid for the previous calendar year amounted to more than EUR 1,080 but not more than EUR 5,000,
- the calendar year if the wage tax to be paid for the previous calendar year did not exceed EUR 1,080.

If your business did not exist for the entire previous calendar year, the wage tax to be paid for the previous year must be converted to an annual amount for the determination of the wage tax registration period.

If your business did not yet exist in the previous calendar year, the wage tax to be paid for the first full calendar month after opening the business is decisive. To determine the wage tax registration period, this must be converted to an annual amount.

As an employer, you are legally obliged to submit the wage tax registration electronically.

You can only submit the income tax return with an electronic certificate. You will receive the certificate if you have registered with My ELSTER. Please note that registration can take up to 2 weeks.

Only in exceptional cases can your competent tax office waive electronic transmission of the income tax return upon request (so-called hardship case regulation). If you are granted an exemption, you must submit the income tax registration on the officially prescribed form.

In order to avoid queries from the tax office, please always enter the number of your employees in the field provided for this purpose in the income tax registration form.

If you discover that an income tax return that has already been submitted is incorrect or incomplete, you must submit a corrected income tax return for the relevant registration period. Entries must also be made in the lines in which no changes have occurred.