Collecting deposit bottles: When do you have to pay taxes?

Do you have to register a business if you collect deposit bottles?

A business must generally be registered in Germany if you start commercial activity. This commercial activity occurs when you carry out the activity independently and on your own responsibility. This activity is intended to be long-term, to pursue a profit-making intention and to participate in general economic life with this activity.

If you project these elements of the crime onto the activity of a returnable bottle collector, you can see these characteristics quite clearly support the fact that, from a purely tax perspective, collecting returnable bottles is a commercial activity and the business itself is too must be registered.

The only purpose of registering a business is to give you formal permission to run a business and to carry out this activity.

Excluded here are members of so-called liberal professions who do not carry out any commercial activity. This includes people who work as notaries, lawyers, tax advisors or doctors, for example.

How is the business of a deposit bottle collector treated for tax purposes?

According to the definition, returnable bottle collectors are a commercial activity, which must also generally be registered.

When taxing income from commercial operations, the proceeds collected from the returnable bottles are treated as taxable sales, which are paid out at the supermarket checkout. From these sales one could now also offset the necessary expenses incurred in relation to the collecting activity. Costs in the form of a flat rate for the distance traveled to collect the bottles would be conceivable. You will then receive a flat rate of €0.30 per kilometer, which you can then use as operating expenses when determining profit or loss compared to sales.

The income from commercial operations is then determined by deducting the operating expenses from the proceeds and thus obtaining either a profit or a loss.

This amount then usually serves as a reference figure for income from commercial operations. Whether you have to pay income tax on this income depends largely on whether the sum of all income overwrites the so-called basic tax allowance. The basic allowance in 2023 is 10,908.00 euros.

This means that if the total income does not exceed this amount, then you do not have to pay income tax.

Whether the hard-working deposit bottle collectors actually fulfill this obligation remains to be seen. From a purely tax perspective, the elements of a commercial activity are met, as is a corresponding tax liability to the tax office.

If in doubt, it must be emphasized again that it is generally recommended to go for a more precise one Assessment to hire a tax advisor to help you fulfill your tax obligations supports.