Your Lohnsteuerbescheinigung Explained: Which Number Goes Where

The Lohnsteuerbescheinigung (annual payroll tax statement) is the single most important document for an employee’s German tax return. Your employer issues it once a year, usually in January or February, and it holds everything the tax office needs to know about your salary and the tax already paid on it.

The printout carries around thirty numbered fields. A normal return needs about eight of them. This guide goes through those in order and explains what sits in the rest, so you can tell when your situation is more complicated than average.

The short version

• Your employer transmits the data to the tax authorities electronically. The paper you receive is only a printout, for your information.
• Field 1 holds the period of employment. If it does not cover the full year, you need another statement.
• Field 3 is your gross pay, the central figure of the whole return.
• Fields 4 to 6 hold the wage tax, solidarity surcharge and church tax withheld. This is the money you may get back.
• Fields 22 to 27 hold your social insurance contributions and belong in the Anlage Vorsorgeaufwand (insurance contributions schedule).
• The capital letters in field 2 are not typos. They are flags for the tax office.
• You cannot correct an error yourself. Only your employer can transmit a corrected statement.

Where the document comes from

Your employer is required to transmit the statement electronically to the tax authorities after the end of the calendar year, by the end of February at the latest. It is matched to you through your Steueridentifikationsnummer (tax identification number).

You receive a printout, on paper or as a PDF in an employee portal. You do not submit that printout with your return. You need it to copy the figures across and to show what you were certified if questions come up later.

If your employment ends mid-year, you get the statement then rather than the following January.

Field 1: the period

At the top sits the duration of the employment relationship: the dates between which you worked for this employer. It looks like a formality and it is the most common cause of wrong returns.

If it reads 01.01. to 31.12., this employer was your only one that year. If it reads 01.01. to 31.07., something is missing for the rest of the year, either a second employer’s statement or a gap with no employment.

It matters for your deductions too. Your commute belongs to exactly this period. If you changed job and city in August, you have two distances and two counts of working days, each tied to the right statement.

A U in this area stands for Unterbrechung (interruption). It is entered when you had at least five consecutive working days with no entitlement to pay, for instance once sick pay ran out.

Field 2: the capital letters

These flag special circumstances to the tax office:

Letter	Meaning
S	Wage tax was withheld on other payments, for example a back payment from an earlier job.
M	Your employer provided meals during business travel or while you maintained a second household. Your meal allowances are reduced as a result.
F	You were transported to work tax-free in employer-organised group transport.
FR	Cross-border worker arrangement with France.
E	A marker connected to certain payments; it affects very few people.

M is the one to watch if you travelled for work. It means you cannot claim meal allowances in full for the days concerned.

Fields 3 to 6: the core figures

These four numbers appear in almost every return.

Field	Contents	Where it goes
3	Gross pay including benefits in kind	Anlage N, employment income
4	Wage tax withheld	Anlage N, tax withheld
5	Solidarity surcharge withheld	Anlage N, tax withheld
6	Church tax withheld from the employee	Anlage N, tax withheld

The gross pay in field 3 is not your contractual annual salary. It includes benefits in kind such as private use of a company car, and it excludes anything paid out tax-free. So the figure may differ from the one in your head. What is on the statement governs.

Fields 4 to 6 are what you already paid to the tax office over the year. Your refund arises because the final annual tax works out lower than that total.

If you are married and church tax is withheld for both spouses through one employment, there is a separate field for that immediately below.

Field 15: wage replacement benefits

This holds tax-free payments such as Kurzarbeitergeld (short-time work allowance), maternity pay supplements or top-up amounts under phased retirement.

These amounts are not taxed, but they are subject to Progressionsvorbehalt, which raises the tax rate applied to the rest of your income. A figure in field 15 is therefore often the reason a return becomes mandatory, and the reason a refund comes out smaller than expected.

Benefits that do not run through your employer, such as unemployment benefit or parental allowance, do not appear on this statement. You receive a separate certificate from the employment agency or parental allowance office, and those amounts belong in the return as well.

Fields 17 and 18: travel subsidies

These two decide how much of your commuting allowance survives.

• Field 17 holds tax-free employer benefits for travel between home and your primary place of work, typically a Jobticket under § 3 Nr. 15 EStG.
• Field 18 holds employer benefits for the same journeys that were taxed at the flat 15 percent rate.

Both reduce your Entfernungspauschale (commuting allowance). Overlook them and you claim too much for your commute, which the tax office will correct. Since the data arrives electronically, it is caught reliably.

Fields 22 to 27: social insurance

This block goes into the Anlage Vorsorgeaufwand and drives one of the largest deductions in the whole return.

Field	Contents
22	Employer contributions to statutory pension insurance
23	Employee contributions to statutory pension insurance
24	Tax-free employer subsidies towards health insurance
25	Employee contributions to statutory health insurance
26	Employee contributions to statutory long-term care insurance
27	Employee contributions to unemployment insurance

Fields 22 and 23 are subdivided if you are insured through a professional pension scheme rather than the statutory system, as doctors, lawyers and architects often are. If you have private health and care insurance, your contributions appear in a separate field further down the statement rather than in fields 25 and 26.

Every figure in this block has to be carried across. Contributions to basic cover have a large effect on the outcome, and one forgotten line easily costs several hundred euros.

When you have two statements

Changing job during the year means two statements, and both belong in the return in full. The usual mistakes:

• Entering only the current employer’s statement. The tax office already has the other one and will ask.
• Adding the two gross figures together and entering one number. Each statement is recorded separately, because the periods differ.
• Claiming the commute only once. You had two primary places of work, so two distances and two counts of working days.
• Missing a gap between the periods. If you did not work in August, there may have been unemployment benefit, which belongs in the return under Progressionsvorbehalt.

When a figure is wrong

You may not alter the printout, and you may not enter different figures in your return. What was transmitted electronically governs.

If you suspect an error, contact your employer’s payroll department. Until transmission they can amend the statement, and afterwards they can often still correct it. If correction is no longer possible, raise the point with the tax office rather than declaring a different number.

How Solobooks helps

Solobooks walks you through the statement field by field, in the same order the numbers appear on the printout. You type the figures in yourself, by design: Solobooks does not pull data from an ELSTER account, it works with what you enter.

Multiple employers are supported. Each statement gets its own period, and your commute can be assigned to the relevant job, so two distances and two periods sit correctly side by side. Before submission Solobooks checks for missing entries and blocks filing while a started answer is incomplete.

You do not need an ELSTER certificate. Solobooks handles the transmission.

Start your 2025 tax return

For what you can deduct beyond your salary figures, see our guide to work-related expenses for employees.

Frequently asked questions

When should I receive the statement? Electronic transmission to the tax authorities is due by the end of February of the following year. In practice the printout usually arrives with the January payslip.

I lost the printout. What now? Ask payroll for a new copy. The data sits with the tax office; the paper is replaceable.

Why is my gross pay higher than my agreed salary? Because benefits in kind are included, such as private use of a company car, or a subsidy that could not be paid out tax-free.

Do I have to submit the statement with my return? No. The tax office already holds the data. Keep the printout anyway.

I had two jobs at once. Does that count? Yes. Each employment produces its own statement and all of them belong in the return. A second job taxed under Steuerklasse VI usually makes a return mandatory as well.

What does the M in field 2 mean for my travel costs? Your employer provided meals. Your meal allowances have to be reduced for the days concerned.

Sources

• § 41b EStG, conclusion of wage tax withholding and the electronic payroll tax statement
• § 3 Nr. 15 EStG, tax-free employer benefits for travel to the primary place of work
• § 32b EStG, Progressionsvorbehalt
• § 10 EStG, insurance and pension contributions
• Bundesfinanzministerium, announcement of the template for the electronic Lohnsteuerbescheinigung 2025, 20 February 2025

Last checked: 17 September 2026. This article is general information, not tax advice for your individual case. Legislation and official guidance change, the current version of each source prevails.

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Last updated: September 16, 2026