Unclear terms? See Glossary.
What this feature is for
Valutra is a financial planning and liquidity planning tool.
On the Tax projection page you record official tax assessments and your own estimates so that expected tax payments appear in your forecast.
The tax feature currently focuses on planning income tax and solidarity surcharge. Other tax types and complex tax matters are not covered, or only to a limited extent.
Valutra is not:
- tax advice
- tax declaration software
- legally binding tax software
- an exact future tax calculator
All calculations, projections, and suggestions are based solely on data you enter in Valutra. Results can differ significantly from actual tax assessments. Not all tax-relevant matters are captured in Valutra. Only official notices and communications from the tax office are authoritative. Valutra does not replace tax advice.
Core idea: from assessment to forecast
Tax data (assessment, projection, prepayment notice)
↓
Plan items (after "Preview plan items" and "Apply plan items")
↓
balance forecast / liquidity planning
The balance forecast works only with plan items. Tax data alone does not change your account balance until you have run "Preview plan items" and then clicked "Apply plan items".
"Save" stores tax data only.
"Preview plan items" calculates the plan items and shows you the changes before applying.
"Apply plan items" creates or updates the plan items (additional payments, refunds, prepayments) in Planning.
Three record types
Tax assessment (Steuerbescheid)
A tax assessment is the official notice for a completed tax year. Enter values unchanged from the notice.
Valutra does not verify whether a tax assessment is substantively or legally correct.
Typical workflow:
- Record the assessment (tax year, notice date, official values)
- Review additional payment, refund, and any new prepayments
- Run "Preview plan items"
- "Apply plan items"
Tax projection (Steuerprognose)
A tax projection is a non-binding estimate for a future tax year. It helps you account for possible tax payments in liquidity planning.
Projections are non-binding estimates. Automatically derived suggestions and prepayments are planning aids — not binding tax assessments.
The quality of a projection depends significantly on the quality and completeness of your planning data.
Typical workflow:
- Create a projection for a tax year (from 2020 onward, including past years)
- „Vorschläge ermitteln“ (orientiert sich an Projekt-/Vertrags-Buchungsplänen und dem Vorjahr)
- Eingaben prüfen und ggf. anpassen — die Zusammenfassung aktualisiert abgeleitete Werte beim Bearbeiten
- "Calculate projection and save data" (income tax, solidarity surcharge, settlement breakdown)
- For recent tax years (from two calendar years before the current year) and without a tax assessment for the same year:
- set the expected assessment notice date
- "Calculate payment and prepayment forecast"
- run "Preview plan items" and "Apply plan items"
For older tax years, step 5 and payment proposals are not available — you can still capture and calculate projection data there (e.g. for comparison with a later assessment).
When a tax assessment already exists for a tax year, the projection remains for comparison and calculation — payment proposals and plan-item apply are disabled on the projection. Operational payments come from the assessment (or prepayment notice).
Prepayment notice (Vorauszahlungsbescheid)
A prepayment notice is a separate administrative act by the tax office. It sets (new) quarterly prepayments for income tax and solidarity surcharge — often after reduction or adjustment requests.
It can exist independently of the main tax assessment and replaces the affected prepayment periods.
Typical workflow:
- Record the prepayment notice separately
- Enter remaining amounts for the current year and future years from the notice
- Run "Preview plan items" and "Apply plan items"
Workflow: projection → tax assessment
When the official assessment arrives, you can use an existing tax projection as a starting point:
- Open the projection and choose "Convert to assessment"
- Enter official values from the tax assessment and review before clicking "Save"
- Click "Save" to store the assessment — the projection remains and can be compared with the assessment later
On the Overview, Projection accuracy shows a table comparing years where both records exist.
When you apply plan items from a tax assessment, Valutra removes projected plan items for the same tax year in the preview — unless actual payments are already linked to them. If linked payments exist, you must resolve the inconsistency manually first.
Changes to historical tax data
Changes to tax assessments, prepayment notices, or projections with payment workflow can affect later tax projections (e.g. via prepayment schedules).
Changes to analytical-only projections without payment proposals (older tax years) generally do not affect later projections.
Valutra does not recalculate existing projections automatically. This keeps history traceable and prevents reviewed projections from changing unintentionally.
After changes to historical tax data, review later tax projections and, if needed, run "Derive suggestions" and "Calculate projection and save data" again.
Additional payment, refund, no payment
A tax assessment can result in an additional payment, a refund, or no payment.
If there is no payment, no plan item is created.
Prepayments in tax assessments
Not every tax assessment includes new prepayments.
If an assessment contains no new prepayment amounts, existing prepayment arrangements remain in place. Do not invent or estimate prepayment values.
The most recent effective prepayment decision governs ongoing prepayments — whether from a tax assessment or a separate prepayment notice.
Tax office offsets
The tax office can offset payments and refunds across multiple tax years. Valutra does not currently model such offsets separately.
Valutra still creates separate plan items per tax year. Actual bank payments may therefore differ from individual plan items.
Modeling recommendations
- Record one tax assessment per tax year
- Never combine multiple tax years
- Record prepayment notices separately
- If prepayment amounts are missing from an assessment: do not estimate or invent values
- Even when the tax office offsets amounts: still record tax years separately
- Enter official values unchanged
Connection to the balance forecast
After "Preview plan items" and "Apply plan items", the plan items appear in Planning and flow into the Balance forecast — like other planned income and expenses.
Important:
- Linked actual payments replace the corresponding planned tax payments in the forecast.
- The forecast only shows what you have recorded and added to Planning after "Preview plan items" and "Apply plan items"
VAT (USt) is a separate topic. See VAT overview.
Automatic suggestions (MVP scope)
When you run "Derive suggestions", Valutra fills in a starting point for the projection. The scope is intentionally limited — you can always override or enter values manually.
Included automatically
- Self-employment income (net business revenue): net income from Project and Contract planned transactions in Valutra for the projection tax year (same calendar year and accounting method as VAT: cash basis / accrual)
- Accepted business expenses: gap between prior-year reference business revenue and prior-year self-employment income from the reference assessment (when available)
- Employment income, withheld wage tax, withheld solidarity surcharge: manual entry only (no automatic derivation from payroll)
- Tax deductions and allowances (Sonstige steuerliche Anpassungen): derived from the reference assessment when available
Not included automatically
You can enter all of the following manually:
- Rental income
- Capital income
- Other taxable private income
- Refunded business expenses — the domain model does not yet distinguish operating revenue from expense refunds; Valutra does not infer refunds from payment sign, amount, purpose, text, or matching
- Manual business planned transactions and manual business payments (without Project/Contract origin)
- Tax office payments without a matching Project/Contract planned transaction (system-managed tax/VAT plan items are excluded from business income aggregation)
Tax office plan items
Valutra already models many tax-office cashflows as system-managed plan items (VAT prepayments, income tax prepayments, settlements, projection-generated items, assessment-generated items, prepayment-notice items). These are excluded from the self-employment income suggestion.
Annual VAT settlement payments or refunds that appear only as manual business payments (without a linked system-managed VAT plan item) are not part of the automatic self-employment income suggestion. Enter them manually if they affect your taxable income.
Notes & limits
- Tax projections are non-binding estimates
- Tax projections can differ significantly from actual results, especially with highly variable income, exceptional income, or tax matters not recorded in Valutra.
- Valutra does not capture all tax nuances (e.g. special expenses, loss carryforwards, complex tariff choices)
- Suggestions are based on prior-year values and your planning data — they can differ significantly
- Review results regularly against official documents
Usage & limits
On the free tier, tax projections are limited to the current and next tax year. Details: Usage & limits.