Overview
- Germany’s average turnaround for 2025 income tax assessments was 50.2 days, a slight improvement from 50.8 days the year before.
- Lohnsteuer-kompakt’s ranking, based on over one million anonymized returns across 482 offices, lists Zwiesel as fastest at about 28.4 days and Berlin International as slowest at about 90.4 days.
- North Rhine-Westphalia’s average lengthened to roughly 51.5 days, while Witten bucked the trend, improving to 42.5 days and rising to 15th within the state.
- Lohnsteuer-kompakt attributes the overall gains primarily to expanded digital processing and automation that speeds routine cases.
- A separate smartsteuer report using a different dataset shows longer maximum waits, up to 119 days at Korbach-Frankenberg, and faster processing for spring submissions than late-summer filings.