Steuerklassenrechner: Germany Tax Class Calculator

It depends on how unequal your two salaries are. On a 100.000 € household split 80/20, III/V leaves you about 358 € a month better off during the year than IV/IV; at 50/50 the difference is 5 € a month in III/V's favour. The final bill is the same either way, so the choice is about monthly cash flow and whether you'd rather see a refund or a bill when you file. The table on this page shows all five splits.

Couples are placed in IV/IV automatically once the marriage is registered, even if one spouse has no salary. You only move to III/V, or IV/IV with Faktor, if you apply to your Finanzamt, which you can do online through ELSTER.

Yes. If your spouse has no salary, you can take Class III on your own income and your spouse goes into Class V, where nothing is withheld because there's no wage. That gives the earner the full splitting benefit through monthly withholding instead of waiting for the tax return.

Steuerklasse IV/IV withholds each spouse exactly as if they were single, using only their own income, so nothing is shared between spouses during the year. Steuerklasse III/V shifts the couple's entire tax-free allowance onto the higher earner (Class III), who is withheld using the marriage-splitting tariff on their own income, while the lower earner (Class V) loses their own allowance entirely and is taxed on a steeper curve with no tax-free band. The household's combined net pay is similar either way, but III/V front-loads much more of it into the higher earner's paycheck.

As a general rule, couples with a meaningfully unequal income split (roughly 60/40 or more skewed toward one earner) tend to come out ahead on monthly cash flow with III/V, since the higher earner's paycheck grows substantially. On this calculator's worked example (€75,000 and €35,000 gross), III/V pays out about 5.353 €/month combined against IV/IV's 5.110 €/month, a difference of roughly 243 €/month. Couples with roughly similar incomes (closer to 50/50) tend to do better with IV/IV, since withholding tracks the household's real tax bill more closely and avoids a large year-end surprise. Run your own numbers above, since the exact crossover point depends on both incomes, not just the ratio between them.

No. The household's real final tax liability, settled through the annual tax return (Steuererklärung) under Ehegattensplitting (joint assessment), is the same regardless of which tax class combination you choose for monthly withholding, 24.478 €/year in the worked example above either way. III/V and IV/IV only change how that liability is spread across the year and between the two paychecks, not the total amount owed. What differs is monthly cash flow and how close your withholding tracks the eventual bill.

Because III/V's withholding is a rough approximation of the joint liability split heavily toward one spouse, it rarely matches the real amount owed exactly, so couples using III/V are legally required to file an annual return (Pflichtveranlagung) to settle the difference, which often produces either a refund or a bill. IV/IV can also produce a refund or bill, but the gap is usually smaller, and filing isn't always mandatory in the same way.

IV/IV with Faktor is a third option where the Finanzamt calculates a personalised multiplier (Faktor) based on your expected combined income, applied to both spouses' Class IV withholding to track the real final liability even more precisely than plain IV/IV. It's increasingly popular because it avoids large year-end surprises without the aggressive skew of III/V. This calculator does not currently model the Faktor option; it compares plain IV/IV against III/V.

Yes. Married and civil-partnered couples in Germany can change their tax class combination once per calendar year (with some exceptions, such as after a change in circumstances like childbirth or unemployment of one spouse). The change is made at your local Finanzamt or increasingly online via Elster, and it takes effect from the following month's payroll once processed.