According to the Federal Statistical Office, Germans got back an average of 1072 euros with their tax returns in 2018. Since then, many manufacturers have been promoting their product with this lucrative potential refund. If you are not obliged to submit a tax return, you have four years to file a tax year, so you can still submit this year for 2021, 2020 and 2019 – and hope for a tidy sum.
The iPhone apps Taxfix and Klartax selected by us enable this, as do Smartsteuer, a pure web app, and the universal app Lohnsteuerkompakt for iPhone, iPad or Mac with at least an Apple M1 chip. The Mac apps Tax Savings Declaration and WISO Tax 2023, both of which also run on Intel Macs, only deal with the tax year 2022. However, both manufacturers also offer the software for past tax years. WISO and tax savings declaration support many types of income, including those from commercial operations, self-employment, rental or photovoltaics, and also offer help for the current year, such as an income surplus calculation or a logbook (WISO).
At the beginning, most apps tap into the user’s income and expenses to sound out whether they can handle the tax case at all and to compile the relevant topics.
