As an employer, you must deduct income tax, the solidarity surcharge and, if applicable, church tax from your employees' wages each time they are paid.
You must calculate the amounts according to the personal tax characteristics, which are stored in the tax authorities' database as wage tax deduction characteristics (ELStAM) and must be retrieved by you.
At the end of each registration period, you must summarise the deduction amounts of all employed persons in a wage tax registration, transmit them electronically to the tax authorities and transfer them there. You will not receive a tax assessment notice.
The registration period can be
- the calendar month,
- the quarter or
- the calendar year.
This depends on the amount of tax to be paid.
At the end of the year, you must also submit the data for the entire calendar year, print it out and give it to the employee as an electronic wage tax statement.
Attention: The wages of part-time employees and temporary staff may be subject to flat-rate taxation under certain conditions. For example, if you employ an employee as part of a so-called mini-job, you must pay the flat-rate contributions to payroll tax and health insurancecontributions to income tax, health insurance and pension insurance not to the tax office, but to Deutsche Rentenversicherung Knappschaft-Bahn-See.