New figures on pension taxation: In 2021, taxes had to be paid on almost 65 percent of all statutory, private or company pensions. That is almost 10 percent more than in 2015.
Income tax is due on more and more pension benefits. Last year, almost 65 percent of statutory, private or company pensions were taxable income – a total of 227 billion euros, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Thursday in Wiesbaden. The share has thus increased by 9.7 percentage points since 2015.
The background to this is the new regulation of the taxation of old-age income from 2005. Since then, the taxable portion of the pensions for the respective new pensioners has increased by two percentage points annually from 50 percent at the time. One hundred percent will be achieved in 2040. Conversely, younger employees can deduct more and more expenses for old-age provision from their taxes.
According to the statistics office, it is not yet known how many pensioners will pay income tax for 2021. According to the latest data, a third of pensioners paid income tax in 2018, affecting 7.3 million pensioners. Compared to 2017, the proportion increased by two and a half percentage points or approximately 590,000 people.
In 2021, 21.9 million people received benefits of around 350 billion euros from statutory, private or company pensions.
