Income-Expense Report

The income-expense report is the simple profit determination under Section 4(3) EStG permitted to freelancers and many small traders. No inventory comparison, no balance sheet - you simply set your business income against your business expenses, and the difference is your profit or loss. The EÜR Assistant turns this into a guided flow instead of you struggling through the Annex EÜR.

The core is the categories. The Annex EÜR assigns expenses to fixed lines, and the assistant offers you exactly this structure: goods, premises costs with the capped home office up to 1,260 EUR a year, vehicle costs, travel, depreciation, entertainment, gifts and the other business expenses. Each category comes with a hint of what belongs in it so you do not misfile anything.

Depreciation usually gets confusing fast, but not here. Assets over 800 EUR net you depreciate straight-line over their useful life, low-value assets up to 800 EUR net are immediately deductible in full. The assistant explains this limit at the right place so you treat the laptop correctly instead of having to guess.

A perennial topic is VAT. The assistant separates net and gross, shows the VAT collected and the input tax paid and gives you the balance - that is, what you remit to the tax office or get back. Small businesses under Section 19 UStG that show no VAT work on a gross basis accordingly. This way the EÜR matches your advance VAT return.

The monthly overview is what saves the big picture. Instead of sorting a shoebox at year-end, you see continuously how income and expenses develop, in which month the profit collapses and where the biggest cost blocks are. Ready-made freelancer templates give you a starting point that you adapt to your business.

Everything runs protected, your figures stay in your control. The EÜR Assistant is a recording and overview tool, not tax advice and no replacement for the binding submission via ELSTER. Whether an item is deductible and how it is to be classified can be tricky in individual cases - when in doubt you ask your tax advisor. But for the ongoing, orderly EÜR the assistant is exactly the right tool.