Steuererklärung für Erzieher - Was kann man von der Steuer absetzen? (für Einsteiger) |ERZIEHERKANAL

Every year, 100,000 employees give up to 1,000 euros to the German government and the German finance ministry, simply because they are not concerned with their tax returns. The topic is not as complex and difficult as it seems. In this video, you will receive important basic information. We look at what you as a pedagogical specialist can deduct from the tax and I will show you how you can proceed to pay your tax returns very easily every year. Hi and welcome to a new video. This video is about the wonderful topic of tax and tax returns for pedagogical specialists. You can also read the content of this video on the website erzieher-kanal.de. Feel free to leave a free subscription so you don't miss any more videos and support the work behind the Erzieherkanal. And now, have fun with the video. Before we start with what you as a pedagogical specialist can deduct from the tax, let's go through a few basics on tax. The whole thing is not as complex as you might think. But it is important to be able to at least understand these basics of the German tax system. That's why I tried to present the most important content as simply as possible in this video. You will get to know the topic of tax better after this video and maybe be able to take one or the other tip with you. But I have to point out at this point that this video is not about tax advice. I am not a tax advisor or anything like that and I only share my own experience and give the information according to best knowledge. Do you have any further tips and comments? Then feel free to write a comment. How does our tax system work? Like in almost every country in the world, taxes must also be paid in Germany. In fact, every person is taxable from birth to death in Germany. There are countless types of taxes in Germany. For employees, the wage tax is the relevant one. I refer to this in this video. According to law, everyone who receives a certain annual tax exemption must pay taxes. In Germany, this is 10,908 euros in 2023. So if a person earns more than 10,908 euros a year, they have to pay taxes on the tax office from 10,919 euros. The higher the percentage of taxes, the more the person earns a year. This is called a progressive tax rate. The lowest tax rate in Germany is 14% and starts from 10,919 euros. Small information, the tax exemption remains untaxed. This means that a person with 10,909 euros in taxable income actually only has to tax 1 euro. And that with a tax rate of about 14%. The tax office would then receive an incredible 14 cents. From 62,810 euros annually in taxable income, you pay 42% tax in Germany. And from 277,826 euros annually, you pay 45% tax. The taxable income refers to all taxable income within a year. You can calculate how high your tax rate is in the Federal Ministry of Finance. You can find a link in the video description. The taxes you see on your monthly income tax are something like a precondition that you apply to the tax office. Similar to the deduction payment for electricity in your apartment. This precondition is deducted from your gross income. Your employer takes care of it and transfers this tax payment from you to the tax office. You usually have nothing to do with it. How high this monthly tax is as a precondition depends on your tax class. Further information would be too much at this point. If you are not married and employed in a job, you are usually in tax class 1. At the end of the year, the tax office checks whether you may have paid too little taxes. Then it will contact you and ask you to submit a tax statement. The funny thing is, the tax office will not contact you if you have paid too many taxes. This is even the case with most employees. They pay too much and thus give the tax office or the German tax office a lot of money every year. There are estimates that this is up to € 1,000 per year for employees on average. Therefore, you should definitely deal with this topic and check your case. I will tell you at the end of this video how this works. With over 45 years of experience, this is definitely a lot of money. What does it mean to deduct something tax-related? We have learned so far that the tax clause is oriented towards an income that is taxed annually. The higher this is, the more taxes you pay, in sum but also in percent. There is the possibility that you reduce your income that is taxed annually, i.e. you have to pay less taxes and in the end you get money back from the tax office. And all this without you earning less money in total or receiving less net monthly. There are certain things that you can deduct tax-related. This includes, for example, the way you drive, work, education costs and much more. I will mention everything possible in detail in a moment. Here is a small calculation example. If you have an income to be taxed of € 50,000 a year, you pay € 11,000 in taxes on top of that. Assuming you have also paid € 11,000 in taxes on top of your monthly income for the year, then everything is fine. You don't get anything back and don't have to pay anything. But if you have costs that you can deduct from the tax at the level of € 5,000, then you no longer have to tax € 50,000, but only € 45,000. And that even though you earned the same amount in the year. So you deducted € 5,000 from the tax. The tax on a taxable income of € 45,000 is just under € 9,500. If you have also paid € 11,000 in taxes on top of your monthly income for the year, then you have paid € 1,500 too much in taxes. If you don't make a tax return, the money is gone. If you make a tax return, the tax office will transfer € 1,500 to you. At this point, there is often a misconception. If you deduct something from the tax, then that doesn't mean that you get the amount back in full from the tax office. But it means that the amount reduces your taxable income. If you need a PC for € 500 for work and home office, then you don't get € 500 back from the tax office, but your annual income, which you have to tax, is € 500 less. An example. With an income of € 30,000 to be taxed, you would have to pay € 4,700 in taxes on top of the year. If you deduct the PC for € 500, then you have to tax € 29,500. Then you would only have to pay € 4,533 in taxes on top of the year. So you don't get € 500 back, but € 167. This is important to understand. What can you deduct from the tax? You can add up your expenses for work and things that are related to it and these reduce your taxable income. For employees, the term advertising costs is used here. This is the sum of the costs that reduce your annual income to be taxed. There is an advertising cost package. This is € 1,200 a year. This means that you as an employee automatically pay € 1,200 less taxes, no matter how high your actual expenses for work are. If you add up your actual costs, you can really save taxes and get money back from the tax office. Let's look at what things count for advertising costs. I'm specifically referring to educational professionals. It is important that these advertising costs are related to the profession and are included in this context. You can find my blog post on the website as well as a free PDF to download with a list of some things that count for the advertising costs. An important piece of information. This also applies to trainees who get a salary or, for example, for trainees who complete their training in the middle of the year and then start working. You can also make educational costs taxable. School fees, school supplies, travel costs to school, textbooks, magazines or also the costs for my online courses. You can find the link in the video description. One point that is super important if you have a longer way to work is the distance package, also known as the commuter package. This package is also recognized by the tax authorities without any problems and can really be worth it. But here only one way counts, i.e. the way back to work. You get 30 cents per kilometer for a simple way to work from up to 20 kilometers. From the 21st kilometer even 38 cents. The practical thing is that you also get the money if you ride a bike, run, let yourself be taken with you or the like. Assuming your way to work is 25 kilometers with one route and you work full time all year round, then the advertising costs here are almost 1700 euros and you should definitely make a tax return. Advertising costs include, for example, work and professional clothing and the costs for laundry. There were various statements from the community. Some tax authorities recognize professional clothing, i.e. the costs for clothing, which is only for the facility, but some tax authorities do not. You can definitely try it. What you should definitely consider are work supplies that you need for the facility but are not taken over by it. This includes printers, papers, cartridges, printing costs, pens, file folders and sometimes also handicraft utensils. If you have a workroom that you only need for work, you can pay for it in installments or calculate the rental costs and use them as advertising costs. For facilities with home office, this is very well possible, for example. The workroom is a topic for itself and is linked to certain conditions. It must be a separate and accessible space and really necessary for work. But what is also relevant for many educational professionals are contributions to unions or vocational associations. Donations to non-profit organizations such as the Akita Foundation are also considered advertising costs. All application costs are important, especially for trainees and beginners. These also count as advertising costs, even if the application was not successful. So costs for application photos, shipping and porto, trips, application maps, copies and so on. In training, however, such things as costs for a laptop, a tablet or other technical things that are needed for training or work are often calculated in percentage terms and can be clearly noticeable in the tax. As already mentioned at the beginning, costs for textbooks and journals also count. This applies to trainees, but also to people who have been in the practice for a long time. As a result, you continue to educate yourself professionally and professionally. The same applies to privately funded training, seminars and further education in a professional context. These can also cost several hundred to thousands of euros. Also costs for a degree can be calculated, for example semester contributions. If you move for your profession, especially to another city, then you can have a transfer cost package calculated at a rate of 820 euros, no matter how high your actual transfer costs were. This can also be really worthwhile. As already mentioned, these are just examples. You can calculate all these costs within a year. These then result in your advertising costs. This is especially worthwhile as soon as the advertising costs are higher than 1,200 euros. As already mentioned, there are even more things that count as advertising costs and which reduce your taxable income and you ultimately have to pay less taxes. Rent side costs, health insurance, telephone costs, additional contributions to care for the elderly, child care costs and much more can also be made valid. We now come to the last point of this video, namely three tips and hints for paying your tax return. In the past, the tax return was filled out on a multilayered sheet of paper and submitted to the tax office. Today there is the online portal Elster. Everything is transmitted digitally there. In general, the tax office does not want any proof of your advertising costs. But if they do become skeptical, they will ask. So you should upload everything, but you don't have to submit it directly or show it. This saves a lot of work. But I also have to honestly say that tax forms and the online portal Elster can get on your nerves, especially if you make a tax return for the first time. Many hundreds of lines with incomprehensible official German and hardly any explanation. However, there are already really good solutions for submitting a tax return, and you don't have to go directly to an expensive tax advisor, even if this can of course be very useful in complex tax cases. On the one hand, I can recommend so-called wage tax aid associations. Here you become a member and pay a contribution that is measured on your annual income. This is often less than 100 euros, which you can also make taxable. There you have a contact person and this can give you clues about what advertising costs could be in question for you. At the beginning, I also applied to a wage tax aid association. It really helped me and was super stress-free, especially if you have a basic understanding of taxes and know what you have to pay. I had maybe half an hour to an hour of work a year with it, because I collected everything and brought it to the association. They then took over everything and also communicated with the tax office. Wage tax aid associations are my recommendation, especially for novices. Another tip are tax programs and tax apps. There are different tax programs and tax apps that basically accompany and support you with your tax return. You have to enter everything yourself, but you are basically asked about relevant tax issues by the program and your tax return is created from it. There are many programs. These cost between 30 and 50 euros a year. The community at Instagram recommended Taxfix, Wiso and Smartsteuer. If you have a basic understanding of taxes, maybe you already have tax notices from older years that you can roughly orientate yourself to, then a tax program is definitely worth considering. A practical implementation idea would be that you, if you have never made a tax return, can do this for the first few years through a wage tax aid association or explore yourself with one. You can show the documents and ask questions of understanding. Are you motivated in the years to come and would like to take care of your taxes on your own? Then you could use tax programs or if you have a lot of nerves and energy, just use Elster. I hope I was able to help you with this video. If so, please leave a thumbs up and if you are interested, you can also read all the content on the website erzieher-kanal.de.