VIDEO: Tax return for living apart

Fill out the tax return together in the year of separation

• The rule is that - unless one of the two spouses is required to do so - the tax return for the year of separation must be completed together. A common disposition is based on this.
• You will only prepare your own tax return in the second year that you are separated. The date of separation is irrelevant. It does not matter whether you have been January or 31st December are living separately, the tax class change will only take place on the 1st of December. January of the following year.
• A tax class change is also possible during the year on request, but then applies retrospectively to the 1st January. In this case, both spouses must agree. If the wife applies for a separate assessment and the spouse refuses to do so, he must reimburse the wife for any tax advantages that she would have received if she had had an individual assessment.
• Due to the change in the law that either child benefit is paid or a child allowance is granted, the discussion about who receives the child allowance is idle.

Tax refund for separated couples

A sticking point in the joint tax return while you are already separated is the possible tax refund. More precisely, the interesting question is who gets it, or who gets how much?

• One variant is that each of the two spouses simply receives half.
• Alternatively, the reimbursement can be divided according to § 37, II Tax Code. This means that the person who caused the tax liability and thus also the refund will receive it.
• As a third way, after submitting the joint tax return, the reimbursement is divided in the same way as the gross income of the separated spouses is distributed. However, the tax class cannot be taken into account here.
• The fairest variant, however, is the division according to a fictitious assessment of the spouses according to tax class I. However, this calculation should be carried out by a tax specialist.