Bavarian municipalities used the 2019 property‑tax reform to raise their local revenues significantly. On average, their totals jumped 10.4 percent, according to figures from the Federal Statistical Office cited by “Welt am Sonntag”. No other German state saw a larger rise.
In other jurisdictions the impact was far smaller. Hessian towns increased their relevant ground‑tax income (Category B) by an average of 3.7 percent over 2024, while Lower Saxony’s figures rose by 1.7 percent. Elsewhere the revenue fell – most sharply in Thuringia, where municipalities reported a collective loss of six percent compared with the previous year. Data for the city‑states (Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfurt) have not yet been released.
When the reform was approved in 2019, politicians promised that it would not be used to raise local collections. The Bavarian State Office for Taxes told “Welt am Sonntag” that, “in line with the expressed political will of the Bavarian state government, the property‑tax receipts of a municipality after the reform should not exceed those before it”. Whether the reform was implemented neutrally in each municipality, however, depended on the individual community’s determination of the levy rate.
On 1 April the Federal Statistical Office issued a brief press note on local‑government finances, noting only that the total property‑tax receipts (Categories A and B) remained unchanged at 14.5 billion Euro last year. When “Welt am Sonntag” asked for a breakdown by state, the statisticians supplied the requested data.
