The appeals have probably worked: more and more Hamburg residents with real estate have now submitted their property tax returns to the tax office. "50.18 percent is the current tax rate for declarations on the new property tax in Hamburg. 49.82 percent are still missing," wrote Hamburg's Finance Senator Andreas Dressel (SPD) on Monday on Facebook and Twitter.

Filing a property tax return is mandatory for property owners. After an extension of the deadline, you now have until the end of January 2023 to do so. In mid-October, the delivery rate was still almost 39 percent. A very significant part of it had been submitted via the Elster online procedure. According to Dressel, Hamburg receives around half a billion euros a year from property tax.

The new declarations are necessary because the property tax is to be calculated differently in the future. The new regulation of the property tax from 2025 became necessary after a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in 2018, since the previous calculation was based on partly completely outdated data.

Facebook post by Andreas Dressel Twitter post by Andreas Dressel Statements from Hamburg.de on property tax