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.

The charitable organizations must report the total amount of donations made by the respective person in 2022 to the tax authorities by the end of February 2023 (via FinanzOnline, using the encrypted sector-specific personal identification number for taxes and duties). The submissions received by the donation recipients from the tax authorities can be tracked in detail by the donor in FinanzOnline (comparable submitted payslip).

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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