Pensioners no longer need a certificate

Many pensioners ask the German pension insurance company for a specific document for their tax return. They could save themselves this effort.

Many pensioners are also required to declare their income taxes. But they are apparently a bit overzealous: As t-online learned from the German Pension Insurance Association, employees in the information and advice centers and on the service telephone regularly receive calls from pensioners who demand a certificate of the pension they have received. This certificate is no longer necessary for the tax return, as all the data is available to the tax office.

This means: Anyone who files their tax return no longer needs to enter the data about their statutory pension in the forms, as the pension insurance company has already transmitted this automatically. “Only those who want to have their taxes calculated in advance using the tax programs need the data,” Katja Braubach from the German Pension Insurance Bund told t-online.

Long waits on the phone are no longer necessary. Pensioners can request the free certificate, officially called “information about reporting to the tax administration,” via the pension insurance online service. Important here: The certificate can always only be issued in the year following the year for which the pensioners want to declare their taxes.

Once applied for, the certificate will be automatically sent by the end of February in subsequent years. The first time you have to apply for it using your personal pension insurance number at www.eservice-drv.de. If the certificate is required for a survivor’s pension, you must provide the insurance number of the deceased.