Inheritance tax and gift tax

The statistics of inheritance and gift taxes are a decentralised set of statistics which, from reference year 2002, has been produced every five years and from reference year 2008 every year jointly by the Federal Statistical Office and the statistical offices of the Länder. The data are collected at the local tax offices responsible for inheritance tax as part of tax assessment. What is covered by the statistics is the taxable transfers by reason of death and by gifts for which inheritance or gift tax was assessed in the reference year. The survey content is the transfer by reason of death and the transfer by gift, the taxable transfer and the tax assessed, the tax classes, the estate of a deceased person, the estate objects and deductible debts of the estate, the net estate.
The statistics cannot provide information on all cases of property passing in the reference year. First, most transfers by reason of death and by gift are within the exemption limits, that is, no tax is assessed. Consequently, they are not included in the statistics. Second, the local tax offices can still in the future assess taxes on transfer by reason of death and by gifts of the reference year. Similarly, the statistics contain cases of property passed several years before, for which a tax was assessed only in the reference year.

Trade tax

The trade tax is a municipal tax and as such the most important source of income for municipalities to fund public spending. The Federation and the Länder also benefit from the trade tax by way of allocation.

Every three years, from 2011 annually, the statistical offices of the Federation and the Länder collect the data needed to compile trade tax statistics. The data are obtained from the local tax offices’ tax assessment and reallocation notices, providing information on a business’s taxation basis including the basic tax amount. The trade tax revenue of the individual municipalities, which is ascertained by multiplying the basic tax amount of a municipality by the municipality’s trade tax assessment rate, is not covered by the statistics.

Corporation tax

Corporation tax returns and their annexes are statistically processed every three years by the statistical offices of the Federation and the Länder to compile corporation tax statistics. In addition, the Federal Statistical Office compiles annual corporation tax statistics. Corporation tax statistics cover receipts, taxable income and the corporation tax including the data ascertained during the taxation procedure.
The units subject to corporation tax are legal persons (in particular, corporations such as public limited companies and limited liability companies, other associations of persons (to the extent that they are not co-entrepreneurships as defined in the Income Tax Act), and conglomerations of property.
For scientific research, data set descriptions are available on the web pages of the research data centre.

Wage and income tax

One of the public sector’s most profitable sources of income is income tax, which is collected annually. Since 2001 the Federal Statistical Office has annually processed wage and income tax data produced under the automated taxation procedure.
In addition, every three years (2001, 2004, 2007) the statistical offices of the Länder compile detailed wage and income tax statistics. For that purpose, they statistically evaluate wage tax cards and electronic certificates of wage tax deduction in addition to income tax assessments. In contrast to the annual statistics, the triennial statistics provide detailed regional results and reliable data on freelancers. Triennial wage and income tax statistics are also used for fiscal policy purposes (wage tax analysis and distribution of the municipal income tax share).
Annual income tax statistics allow annual data to be linked to a panel on the basis of time, making new evaluations possible, for example, the analysis of adjustment reactions to changes in tax legislation.

Air transportation tax

The air transportation tax is collected for domestic and international flights departing from German airports. The party liable to pay the tax is the airline, which generally passes on the levy to the air passengers. The tax rate depends on the distance between the airport of departure and the biggest commercial airport of the country of destination and is subdivided into three distance classes.

The tax applies only to commercial passenger flights. It does not apply, for example, to departures of passengers under two years of age, departures serving military, state authority or medical purposes, and flights of crews dealing with the security of air passengers.

The Federation is entitled to the revenue from the air transportation tax.

Statistics on real property tax and trade tax comparisons

Real property tax and trade tax are the primary sources of income for municipalities. They are used to fund municipal public spending. Real property tax is imposed on the value of real estate in the domestic territory. The tax revenue goes exclusively to the municipalities where the relevant plots of land etc. are situated. Real property tax comprises category A real property tax which is collected from agricultural and forestry holdings and category B real property tax which is imposed on the value of all other plots of land etc. As regards trade tax, the object of taxation is the business establishment and its objective earning capacity.

The purpose of comparing real property tax and trade tax revenue is to calculate fiscal capacity ratios (real property tax and trade tax capacities, and municipal fiscal capacities) on a standardised basis across the country. These ratios are important indicators of the economic and financial situation of municipalities. This is not only of general interest to statisticians. The federal and Land legislators rather take the fiscal capacity as a basis for financial regulations to achieve equalisation of revenue between the Länder or the municipalities.

Tax revenue and assignment, cash tax revenue

In order to enable parliaments, administrations and the interested public to get a general idea of the tax situation of the Federation, Länder and municipalities, the legislature ordered a statistical survey of tax revenue, regularly collecting current data on taxes of central, regional and local authorities in a breakdown by type of tax. Five large blocks representing the tax types can be distinguished:

• Common taxes
• Federal taxes
• Land taxes
• Municipal taxes
• Customs duties

Cash tax revenue is a public authority’s actual cash position in terms of the money cashed in during a specific period, irrespectively of the time when a tax liability arose or of the year to which the payments refer. Leaving out of account the periods for which payments are made, the actual cash revenue of a specific reference period includes items such as advance payments, final payments, back payments, delay penalties and so on and it is possibly reduced by reimbursements.

Partnerships and communities

The statistics have been compiled annually (since 2008) by the statistical offices of the Federation and the Länder and are based on the declaratory procedure (statistics of partnerships/ communities). They cover the separate and uniform determination of any income received by partnerships or communities. These statistics provide important information on the amount of income by type and the number of partners involved.

Turnover tax

The turnover tax data are shown in two separate sets of statistics. The turnover tax statistics (advance returns) shows the taxpayers obliged to submit an advance turnover tax return. The turnover tax statistics (assessments) covers all enterprises obliged to submit a turnover tax return every year. However, due to the long submission deadlines, those data become available much later than the data of the advance returns.
Both sets of statistics cover not only tax variables resulting from the tax proceedings (such as non-taxable and taxable deliveries and other performances (turnovers), intra-Community acquisitions, deductible input tax and turnover tax) but also a variety of classifying variables. They include the economic branch to which the enterprise’s main activity belongs, and the legal form. Those data allow classifying the enterprises and performing detailed evaluations.