Kindergeld / Kinderfreibetrag

[cfp]

Hi,

Because we're terrible at admin, we never got around to applying for Kindergeld for our two children.

However, my wife and I both have high enough incomes that Kinderfreibetrag ought to be better for us than Kindergeld (according to the graphs here https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinderfreibetrag for example).

So, we were not that worried about not applying for Kindergeld. If we had applied for it, we thought it would just reduce the offset from Kinderfreibetrag, so actually we would be no better off if we had applied for Kindergeld.

However, our tax advisor is not sure this is correct. It seems that the tax office always acts as if you did receive Kindergeld even if you did not, so the Kinderfreibetrag you receive always has the Kindergeld amount subtracted from it (even if you did not receive Kindergeld).

Is this correct? Has anyone experienced this? Is this actually in line with the German statute? It seems crazy to have a tax credit where you can never actually obtain the full amount of the tax credit! We are awaiting some clarification from the tax office, but it may not fully resolve things.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

[PandaMunich]

What you need to do now is apply for Kindergeld back to the date you moved to Germany and the Familienkasse will them issue a Bescheid denying you this Kindergeld for all periods except the last 6 months.

Your Steuerberater will fill in 0€ for your Kindergeld entitlement into Anlage Kind, line 6 "Anspruch auf Kindergeld": https://www.steuerklassen.com/content/a ... d_2022.pdf
A scan/copy of this Familienkasse-Bescheid refusing your Kindergeld will have to be sent to the Finanzamt as proof that you really did not get any Kindergeld.

See here (this is a Haufe article, they resist GoogleTranslate, so copy it into DeepL.com to translate it into English): https://www.haufe.de/finance/haufe-fina ... 03188.html

If your tax advisor (who will just be a Steuerfachangeste!llte(r) and not a Steuerberater, or he/she would know all this), still resists, send him/her that Haufe article.

[cfp]

Thanks! That's much more helpful than what I got out of my tax advisor. (Perhaps time to change advisors!)

So, to recap (correct me if I am wrong):
1) If we do not ever apply for Kindergeld, we really will be worse off forever.
2) If we do now apply for Kindergeld, we will be no worse off than had we applied straight away, despite the fact that more than 6 months have elapsed.

So, time for me to bite the bullet and do some admin!