Office chair: tax deduction is possible

An ergonomic office chair is definitely worth the investment. Nevertheless, it is often associated with high costs. However, it is possible to deduct a comfortable office chair from your tax bill. This allows you to reduce the costs somewhat, as the tax office will reimburse you for part of the costs. You can find out how this works and how exactly you can write off an office chair in this blog article!

Note: Please note that the following information relates to the tax situation for employees in Germany. For employees in Austria and Switzerland as well as the self-employed, the tax deduction for office furniture may be slightly different.

When can the office chair be deducted from tax?

To be able to successfully deduct your office chair from tax, you should meet certain requirements. We explain what these are here:

Your office chair primarily fulfills professional purposes.

As work equipment, you can fully deduct all purchases, including an office chair, from your taxes. For this, your office chair must be used more than 90% for professional purposes. You must be able to prove that you also work from home and that you had to equip yourself for this. A confirmation from your employer or a home office agreement in your employment contract is sufficient.

If you only work from home one day a week, for example, it will not be possible to deduct the entire amount from your tax bill. Your purchases can then only be deducted proportionately.

You have no other workplace available.

You can also deduct the office chair in full from your home office costs if your home office is the only possible place of work. This is usually only rarely the case for non-self-employed persons, but it does happen, for example, if the company headquarters are closed. If you only work in your home office for an agreed number of hours per week, the costs of the office chair are proportionately reimbursed.

In this sense, you can claim work equipment for tax purposes if you use it less than 90% for work. Expenses such as the cost of energy, lighting and hardware can also be claimed here, provided you can provide sufficient proof of professional use.

How can the deduct the office chair?

Depending on your profession, your income is taxed either monthly, usually as an employee, or annually, as a self-employed person. Deducting something from your tax bill means that you can reduce this tax amount. To deduct something for tax purposes, you must submit a tax return at the end of the year or in the following year for the previous year.

Deducting office furniture from tax as an employee

Employees usually submit a tax adjustment, with which you can subsequently claim additional expenses, such as an office chair, and thus get back some of the tax you have already paid each month. This information is submitted as so-called income-related expenses (according to § 9 para. 1 EStG) or pro rata as home office costs. As described above, the amount reimbursed may depend on the cost of the office chair and its use in your home office.

Deduct office furniture as a self-employed person

For self-employed the situation is slightly different. They include purchases such as an ergonomic desk chair among their business expenses which allows them to reduce the basis for calculating the tax payable and thus save a little. In accordance with § 4 para. 4 EStG freelancers and tradespeople can deduct all expenses that they use for business purposes from their taxes. If a new office chair or stool costs less than 800 euros net, it is a low-value asset, meaning that the chair can be deducted in full in the year of purchase (§ 6 para. 2 EStG). If the price is over 952 euros gross, you must depreciate your office chair in small parts over several years and cannot claim it at the total price. The depreciation period for furniture is 13 years.

The great thing about this? Office chairs from Yaasa only cost up to EUR 398.00! The Chair Classic, Chair Essential and Chair Luis therefore all fall under the above-mentioned limit and can therefore be depreciated in full.

Office chair as an extraordinary expense in the tax return

In some cases, an ergonomic office chair can also be deducted as an extraordinary expense in your tax return. However, a number of conditions must be met for this. Extraordinary expenses include

• major, private expenses that must be incurred for legal, factual or moral reasons and are necessary under the circumstances
• the expenses exceed a certain limit of your total income

An ergonomically adaptable office chair can constitute an extraordinary expense if it was purchased for medical reasons, e.g. after an operation or as a preventive measure following a slipped disc. In any case, it should be possible to prove the medical reasons, for example by means of medical certificates.

Furthermore, expenses can only be considered an extraordinary burden if they exceed the limit of reasonable expenses. For taxpayers who do not have children and have total income of up to 15,340 €, this limit is 5% of their total income. For taxpayers with children or other income, the limit for reasonable expenses is different. You can find out which provisions are defined in these cases here.

In most cases, the purchase of an ergonomic office chair alone will not be sufficient to claim extraordinary expenses in your tax return due to the defined amounts. However, if you have to bear other costs, e.g. illness-related costs, you can add these to the acquisition costs of the ergonomic office chair. The amount that exceeds the limit of reasonable annual expenditure can therefore be taken into account in your tax return.

Office chair depreciation: How much tax do I get back?

There is no general answer to how much tax you can get back from the tax office for a new office chair. As explained above, the tax office may only allow you to deduct part of the purchase costs, for example if you only use the office chair occasionally at home for work.

The fact is that you can deduct your office chair in full if you work predominantly, i.e. the majority of your working hours, in your home office and the chair does not cost more than 800 euros.

Is there an upper limit or a maximum amount for the tax deductibility of office chairs?

For employees, all work-related expenses can be deducted regardless of their amount, but the rule of thumb is: the higher the work-related expenses submitted, the more likely it is that the tax office will check them. You should therefore always be able to argue your case when deducting expenses.

The following applies to the office chair: An office chair can be fully deducted as a low-value asset up to 800 euros. If the office chair costs more, it must be depreciated annually on a pro rata basis.

For some business expenses such as commuting costs, there are also annual maximum amounts, for example the commuter allowance of 4,500 euros.

Office furniture: tax declaration made easy

You can always claim the costs of the office chair for the respective year of purchase. The most important tip here is to keep the invoice! Without the invoice, you cannot deduct any money or write off your office chair.

Home office purchases are submitted using the EST form, namely the Annex N. Items 42 and 43 include an office chair for your home office, for example. Once completed, the application can simply be submitted online.

What information must be included on the invoice for the office chair?

An invoice of 250 euros or more that is to be tax-deductible must contain at least the following information:

• Date of issue of the invoice
• Consecutive invoice number of the seller
• Full address of the seller (name and address, tax number if applicable)
• Full address of the buyer (your name and address where you use the chair)
• Quantity and common name of the office chair supplied
• Consideration and tax amount separately (net amount + gross amount)
• Tax rate to be applied

The following applies to invoices under 250 euros

• Full name and address of the seller
• Date of issue of the invoice
• Quantity and commercial description of the office chair supplied
• Consideration and tax amount due on it in one sum (gross amount)
• Applicable tax rate

Normally, every invoice that you receive from a trustworthy purchase contains all the components. The mandatory components of an invoice are also binding for the seller before the tax office.

Which receipts should you keep in order to be able to prove tax deductibility?

The rule here is: better safe than sorry! Keep all receipts that prove your work-related expenses (income-related expenses): Travel tickets, parking tickets, restaurant bills, office chair bills and more. It's best to keep them for seven years. This is the period in which the tax office can request proof of your tax deductions. You don't have to submit the receipts to the tax office from the outset, but an audit could take place at any time.

What else is tax deductible?

Tax benefits are not only available for ergonomic office chairs. In principle, everything that you can prove you have acquired in any way for the performance of your work is deductible. Such expenses are also known as income-related expenses. These can include the following expenses:

• Travel and transportation costs
• work clothes
• Office chair or desk
• Further training and seminars
• work equipment
• Telephone and internet costs

The tax office generally accepts a fixed amount for such expenses per year: The so-called flat-rate income-related expense allowance. This amount of 1,230 euros is already included in your monthly income tax statement, even if you have not spent anything at all. It only makes sense to carry out a tax adjustment if your expenses exceed EUR 1,230.

Income-related expenses cannot be reclaimed directly from the tax office, but they reduce the basis for calculating your income tax, which means that the tax office may have to refund you any overpaid taxes.

You can find more detailed information on income-related expenses here.

Calculation example: Deduct office chair for tax purposes

Anton is a software programmer and is delighted: he has found the perfect office chair at Yaasa! With his new Chair Classic, he works from home 1-2 days a week, depending on arrangements with his team. He doesn't have his own home office, but he does have an ergonomically furnished office corner in his living room.

Anton recently found out that he can make tax savings by buying the office chair. And this is how it works:

The Yaasa Chair Classic cost Anton 398.00 € including tax. He received the invoice for this from Yaasa with the purchase. Anton keeps the invoice in a folder in which he collects all his expenses for work.

It also contains his bills for the monthly bus ticket, his internet bills and some receipts for books he has bought to learn more about programming.

As the year draws to a close, Anton decides to submit a tax return. His employer has already had to pay an amount of income tax to the tax office from his monthly salary. He can see this amount on his payslip.

However, Anton can now use the tax office website to submit the additional costs he has paid for work this year. These are as follows:

• 398.00 € for the office chair
• 428.00 € for the Yaasa Desk One
• 80.00 € per month for the bus ticket
• 690.00 € for book purchases
• 12.00 € per month pro rata for the Internet (he uses the Internet at home 30% of the time for work)

This results in income-related expenses of 2,620 euros for Anton. Because this is higher than the legally assumed flat-rate income-related expense allowance of EUR 1,230, the tax office will now calculate Anton's income tax using a lower calculation basis. The amount that he has overpaid via his employer will be refunded to his account.

Office chair: tax deduction pays off!

Conclusion? High-quality equipment in the home office can be quite expensive! But you don't have to pay for everything out of your own pocket, because under certain conditions you can deduct office furniture from your taxes. If you want a new office chair for working from home, the tax office can reimburse part of the costs if

• you regularly use the office chair to work at home
• you mainly work from home
• or you have no other workplace available

So, what are you waiting for? You can still deduct your office chair from your taxes this year!