(2021) What is the non-assessment limit?

Journeys to work, specifically to the primary workplace, are deductible with the commuter allowance. In principle, every employee is required to state the exact number of days they actually travelled to work in their tax return (Form N), as the allowance is only granted for these days. To check whether the number of declared working days is plausible, holiday and sick days must also be declared. Since 2020, business travel days and home working days have also been queried in Form N.

However, it can be very tedious to determine the exact number of working days. Who keeps a daily tally? And then there are employees who also visit the workplace at weekends, sometimes unexpectedly. Therefore, the tax offices established so-called non-consideration limits decades ago. They generally accepted 220 to 230 journeys for a five-day week and 260 to 280 journeys for a six-day week between home and workplace. It should be noted that these are internal limits of the tax offices, and there is no legal entitlement to their application, even though the Munich Tax Court ruled a few years ago that the tax offices should accept 230 days (FG Munich, 12.12.2008, 13 K 4371/07).

So far, so good. But COVID-19 has changed everything. Countless employees were and still are working from home and do not travel to the office or workplace daily. For these days, they can claim a flat rate of 5 Euro per day as work-related expenses (applies to tax returns for 2020 and 2021) or even the costs for a home office. However, due to the lack of journeys, they may not claim travel expenses.

And this is precisely where the tax offices are increasingly intervening, requiring an employer's certificate of the actual working days and, above all, the days on which the primary workplace was visited. The rule that 220 or 230 journeys per year are accepted no longer applies without exception for the years 2020 and 2021!