Work Expenses Calculator

Work expenses (Werbungskosten) are everything you spend to earn your wages. The law lists them in § 9 EStG, and the tax office deducts them from your income before it calculates the tax. Because hardly anyone wants to collect every receipt, there is the employee flat allowance under § 9a EStG: 1,230 EUR a year, automatic, for everyone. So the real question is not whether you have work expenses but whether you get above those 1,230 EUR. That is exactly what this tool works out.

The biggest item is almost always the commute. New for 2026: 38 cents per kilometre from the very first kilometre, as written in § 9 Abs. 1 Satz 3 Nr. 4 EStG since the Steueränderungsgesetz 2025. For the 2025 return that many people are doing right now, it is still 30 cents for the first 20 km and 38 cents from km 21. The calculator knows both years. It also knows that without your own car at most 4,500 EUR a year count, that a more expensive Deutschlandticket can replace the allowance, and that a job ticket from your employer is deducted.

Then the home office: 6 EUR per day on which you mainly worked from home, at most 210 days or 1,260 EUR a year. Whether a day counts even though you also went to the office depends on whether you have your own desk there. The calculator asks and tells you whether your days go in line 58 or 59. If you have a real home study that is the centre of your work, you can instead claim the annual flat rate of 1,260 EUR or the actual costs.

For work equipment the tool calculates like the tax office. Up to 952 EUR with 19 % VAT, that is 800 EUR net, an item counts in full in the year of purchase. Computers, tablets and peripherals always count at once under the BMF letter of 22.02.2022. Pricier things like a desk are spread over their useful life, month by month. If you also use something privately, you enter the work share. For phone and internet, 20 % of the bill, at most 20 EUR a month, is accepted without proof.

On top come the items people forget: training and specialist books, application costs, union fees, 16 EUR account fees, a job-related move with the flat rate of the federal moving costs act, a second home at the workplace with up to 1,000 EUR rent a month plus trips home, and business trips with 14 and 28 EUR meal allowances. And because many people think of their doctor bills in the same breath, there is a second part for extraordinary expenses: medical and care costs count there as far as they exceed your reasonable burden under § 33 Abs. 3 EStG, calculated step by step as the Federal Fiscal Court decided in 2017.

At the end you get a list with amount, annex and line to put next to ELSTER, printed or as a PDF, and filed in the Aktenschrank if you like. With your gross pay the calculator estimates the saving with the real income tax tariff and shows your marginal rate. Everything stays in your browser. Important: this is an estimate that helps you prepare your own return. It does not replace a tax adviser, and what finally counts is decided by your tax office in the assessment notice.