The contributions to private health insurance often add up to a considerable sum. Can the expenses be declared in the tax return?
Those who have private health insurance sometimes pay high premiums. But you don’t have to bear the burden entirely on your own: As with statutory health insurance, you can also deduct the costs of private health insurance (PKV) from your taxes – as other precautionary expenses under special expenses. However, there are restrictions.
On the one hand, you can only fully deduct from your income tax that part of the private health insurance contributions that guarantees benefits at the level of the statutory health insurance. This includes basic outpatient, inpatient and dental cover, but not benefits such as treatment by a senior physician, dentures or a single room in the hospital.
You do not have to calculate the deductible portion of your contributions yourself. Your private health insurance provider will usually tell you at the end of the calendar year what amount you can enter as special expenses in your tax return.
However, you can also generally deduct contributions for services that exceed the level of statutory health insurance from your taxes. However, there are legally defined maximum amounts for these other pension expenses. For employees and civil servants, the limit is 1,900 euros per year, and self-employed people can claim a maximum of 2,800 euros.
However, the maximum amount does not only apply to the premiums for private health insurance, which are attributable to the additional benefits. Other insurance costs such as disability insurance, private liability insurance or private accident insurance are also included in other precautionary expenses. The maximum amount is therefore sometimes reached quickly.
The contributions to private health insurance are special expenses. More precisely: other precautionary expenses. Accordingly, you need the precautionary expenses form in your income tax return. There you enter your private health insurance expenses in the “Other precautionary expenses” section.
Some insurance providers give customers the opportunity to get part of their premiums refunded if they have not submitted any invoices to their private health insurer over the course of a year. If this is the case for you, you must deduct the refunded premiums from your total deductible premiums. You enter the result in your tax return.
Good to know: The so-called accrual principle applies. A refund that you receive in January for the previous year, for example, is offset against the contributions for the current year – not against the contributions from the previous year.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated that there was a maximum amount for the deductible basic services of private health insurance. This is not correct. The maximum amount only applies to additional services that are also deductible, such as treatment by a senior physician. We apologize for the error.
