In principle, the employer is obliged to transmit the wage tax certificates of its employees electronically to the tax authorities. The employer must provide the employees with a printout of their wage tax certificate in accordance with the official model or make it available electronically.
The transmission of the wage tax certificate data must be authenticated in accordance with the officially prescribed data set. The certificate required for authentication must be applied for once in the service portal of the tax authorities. There are also other registration options for ELSTER use (e.g. app, ID card).
An exception to the electronic transmission of the wage tax certificate applies to employers without machine payroll accounting who exclusively employ employees within the scope of marginal employment in their private households within the meaning of § 8a SGB IV ("520-Euro-Job" (until 30.09.2022 450-Euro-Job)). These can issue a corresponding manual wage tax certificate.