The characteristics relevant for the wage tax deduction procedure, such as tax class, factor if applicable, number of child allowances, other allowances, but also the church tax characteristic, are stored by the tax authorities for all employees in a central database. Based on this data, the tax authorities provide employers with the income tax deduction details for electronic retrieval.
In principle, the tax offices are the point of contact when it comes to changing tax classes or other wage tax deduction features.
However, the municipalities/registration authorities are still responsible for the administration of registration data, e.g. marital status, marriage/partnering, birth, joining or leaving the church. This means that the tax authorities can only create the ELStAM correctly if you comply with your statutory reporting obligation and the municipalities can send the relevant data to the tax authorities.
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Further information can be found at www.elster.de.