Here’s how to change your tax class in Germany once you’ve already decided which combination you want. You’ll submit one form, either on paper or through ELSTER, with both spouses signing if you’re moving into a III/V or Faktorverfahren combination. Applications can be submitted anytime, though they must reach the Finanzamt by November 30 to count for the current year, and the change takes effect from the following month.
This article assumes you’ve already worked out which combination actually fits your situation. If you haven’t, that decision, along with what each class means, is covered in the companion piece on choosing a tax class. Everything here is about the mechanics once you know what you want.
The Form Itself
The official form is called “Antrag auf Steuerklassenwechsel bei Ehegatten/Lebenspartnern.” You can get it two ways: as a paper form at any Finanzamt, or through the ELSTER portal, where it sits within the “Antrag auf Lohnsteuer-Ermäßigung und zu den Lohnsteuerabzugsmerkmalen” section. Both routes lead to the same outcome, ELSTER is faster if you already have an account, paper is fine if you don’t and don’t want to wait on registration.
Who Actually Needs to Sign
This is worth getting right, since an application missing a required signature simply gets rejected and sent back. If you’re moving into a III/V combination or the Faktorverfahren, both spouses need to sign the application, whether that’s a physical signature on paper or a digital confirmation through ELSTER. If you’re moving back to IV/IV from either of those, only one partner needs to apply, the other’s signature or consent isn’t required. That distinction matters most during a separation, where one partner may want to revert without the other’s cooperation.
Documents You’ll Need
Both partners’ tax identification numbers, the eleven-digit Steuer-ID, which you’ll find on a payslip or can retrieve through bzst.de if you’ve misplaced it. If you’re applying for the Faktorverfahren specifically, you’ll also need to enter each partner’s projected annual gross salary for the year, since the Finanzamt uses that to calculate the factor.
Deadlines and When It Takes Effect
There’s no fixed date you have to wait for. Since 2020, you can apply at any point in the year, as often as your situation changes. The one date worth remembering is November 30, which is the cutoff for an application to count for the current calendar year. Submit after that, and it applies from January 1 of the following year instead. Once processed, any change takes effect from the first day of the month after your application is handled, and it isn’t applied retroactively to earlier months.
How Long It Actually Takes
Processing at the Finanzamt itself usually runs two to four weeks. If this is your first time using ELSTER, budget extra time before that: registering for an account and receiving your certificate can take up to two weeks on its own, since part of that process still runs by post. If you’re working toward a specific deadline, start the ELSTER registration well before you actually need to submit the form, not the same week.
[PERSONAL NOTE: your own experience waiting on an ELSTER certificate, or a paper submission you made instead]
What Happens After You Submit
You don’t need to tell your employer anything directly. Once the Finanzamt processes your application, it updates your ELStAM record, the electronic system that carries your tax class information, and your employer pulls the new class automatically at the next payroll run. You’ll typically get a written confirmation from the Finanzamt as well.
Timing It Around Parental Leave
If Elterngeld is somewhere in your plans, timing matters more than it might seem. Elterngeld is calculated based on average net income over the twelve months before the month of birth, not your income at the time of the application. A class change made a month or two before that window closes won’t have time to actually influence the calculation. If a more favorable class for this purpose is part of your planning, the change needs to happen several months ahead, not as a last-minute adjustment once maternity leave is already approaching.
Mistakes People Make in the Application Itself
The most common one is a missing signature on a III/V or Faktorverfahren application, which sends the whole thing back and costs you weeks you didn’t need to lose. The second is submitting just after November 30 and being surprised the change doesn’t apply until the following year, when a few days earlier would have made the difference. The third is underestimating ELSTER’s registration timeline entirely, assuming a digital government process will move as quickly as similar services elsewhere, and then scrambling when a certificate that takes up to two weeks to arrive by post doesn’t show up overnight.
[PERSONAL NOTE: a real instance of one of these, yours or someone else’s]
Where This Leads Next
If you’ve moved into III/V or the Faktorverfahren, remember that filing an annual tax return is now mandatory for you, not optional, a point covered in more detail in the tax class comparison article. The actual filing process itself, including deadlines and what to expect, is covered separately as well.
