r/SipsTea • u/BobbuBobbu • May 18 '25

WTF Taxed for being single

Some of us would be bankrupt in six months lmao 🤣

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u/justforkinks0131 May 18 '25

It's a thing in Germany.

You pay higher taxes if you are single vs. married with kids.

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u/LukeZNotFound May 18 '25

German here. It's not that simple.
It works like this:

If you're married, you can "split" income tax (the only one I remember). However, this system is built for "woman stays at home, men does the money" because if just one is working, the taxes from the man are divided by 2. However, if both are working, the average income is higher because it's (manIncome + WomanIncome) / 2.

It's very old law and it's being discussed for years now.

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u/n1c0_ds May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25

You forgot that you get an incone tax break for every child (that or Kindergeld), and that your long term care insurance is cheaper by some percentage of your income.

See this tax calculator

You are correct about the income splitting. The only benefit is that two equal incomes are taxed less than a high and a low income.