Charitable organisations must report the donations they have received by the end of February.

In the tax filing of donations to eligible recipient organizations (e.g., museums, volunteer fire departments, charitable and philanthropic organizations, animal welfare associations, etc.), simplification has already been introduced for donors a long time ago. Instead of filing the donations as part of the employee tax return or tax declaration by the individual donor, the eligible organization (with a fixed local establishment in Germany) submits the relevant information directly to the tax office under certain conditions, so that the tax consideration is automatically taken into account.

Die spendenbegünstigten Organisationen müssen den Gesamtbetrag der im Jahr 2020 von der jeweiligen Person geleisteten Spenden bis spätestens Ende Februar 2021 an das Finanzamt melden (mittels FinanzOnline, wobei das verschlüsselte bereichsspezifische Personenkennzeichen für Steuern und Abgaben zur Anwendung kommt). Die von den Spendenempfängern beim Finanzamt eingelangten Übermittlungen können vom Spender in FinanzOnline im Detail nachvollzogen werden (vergleichbar übermittelter Lohnzettel).

By the way, donations cannot generally be considered a special issue if the donor’s first and last name as well as the donor’s date of birth are not known to the recipient, or the data transmission to the tax authorities has been explicitly prohibited. In exceptional cases, such as errors in the transmission process, donations that are credibly made can be taken into account for tax purposes through the filing of a tax return.

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