At the end of the calendar year or at the end of your employment, your employer will send you a printout of your electronic annual payslip (Lohnsteuerbescheinigung). On it you can see at a glance all the information about your tax deductions and social security contributions, your gross salary and many other amounts that your employer has already deducted via the monthly payroll.
Content:
- What information can I find on the annual payslip?
- When do I get my annual payslip?
- Do I have to include my annual payslip in my tax return?
- What to do if the annual payslip is not available or is incorrect?
- Should I keep my annual payslip?
What information can I find on the annual payslip?
On the printout you will find a lot of information about your income and your personal tax characteristics, such as
- Tax identification number (Steuer-Identifikationsnummer)
- Tax class
- Child allowances
- Address and tax number of your employer
- Gross salary
- Information on withheld wage tax, solidarity surcharge and church tax
- Contributions to health, pension, nursing care and unemployment insurance
- Income replacement benefits, such as short-time work benefits
- Employer reimbursements
By the way: In the case of mini-jobs, you usually do not receive an annual payslip, as social security contributions and wage tax are not paid. In this case, you do not have to declare your mini-job in your tax return.
When do I get my annual payslip?
As a tax-liable employee, you will receive your printout of the electronic annual payslip from your employer from December, but no later than February of the following year. If you do not receive a document by then, please ask your employer.
If you left a company during the course of the year, your former employer will often send you the annual payslip earlier.
Do I have to include my annual payslip in my tax return?
The data of the annual payslip are automatically transmitted by your employer to the tax office. In principle, you can therefore submit your tax return without providing the annual payslip. Since the tax office already knows this data, it will be taken into account when assessing your tax.
Please note, however, that the provisional tax result in our app will not be correct if the data of the annual payslip is missing and may differ from the result of the tax office. In this case, you will not know whether filing a tax return is worthwhile for you and whether you can expect a tax refund.
What to do if the annual payslip is not available or is incorrect?
If you have not received your annual payslip or have lost it, you can simply ask your employer's HR department for it.
If there are errors, you should discuss them with your employer. Usually, you should then receive a corrected version of the certificate from your employer.
Should I keep my annual payslip?
You should file the printouts of your annual electronic payslip together with your annual tax assessment notices and keep them until you retire. In the short term, you may need them together with your tax statement as proof for caring for relatives, applying for parental allowance, a kindergarten place, the child's BAföG application or other applications.
In the long run, however, the printouts could also be needed for calculating your pension in old age, for example, to contest a pension claim.