Cleaning costs

There are no flat rates for cleaning your professional expenses. You can either estimate the costs on the basis of the costs of the individual washing machine runs or you can prove the costs incurred by cleaning in the laundry on the basis of invoices.

There are tables from various consumer associations, such as this one, for calculating cleaning costs at home:

Source: “Steuerliche Absetzbarkeit der Reinigungskosten typischer Berufskleidung”, Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e. V., December 2002 (see PDF, at the bottom)

What does this mean for your entries in FollowMe

You need to work out how much cleaning costs you will incur.

An example calculation could look like this:

  • You clean your uniform after every tour (e.g. because you have a limited number of shirts)
  • You fly 52 tours a year
  • To do this, fill the 5 kg drum of your washing machine with 4 kg at a time
  • You live in a 1-person household and therefore use these table values
  • You wash the uniform with the delicate program (0.88 €), dry (0.55 €) and iron (0.07 €) it = 1.5 € per kg.
  • Annual costs: 52 tours x 4 kg x 1.5€ = 312 € total costs per year
  • You have 195 working days per year: 312 € total costs/ 195 working days = 1.6 € per working day

If your costs were exactly the same, you would enter €1.6 per working day in FollowMe.

You can also find a good summary of cleaning costs here.

Laws and judgments:

– Bundesfinanzhof (BFH) 23 Februar 1990 BFH/NV 1990 S.765

– Bundesfinanzhof (BFH) 29. Juni 1993 Az. VI R 53/92

– OFD Berlin St 154 – S 2354 – 4/00

– SenFin Berlin vom 16.02.2009 – III B – S 2354 1/2006 i. v. m. EStG Kartei Berlin § 9 Fach 9 Nr. 1009

– Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände e.V. Bonn – Berechnung Kosten Waschgänge 1994

– Steuerliche Absetzbarkeit der Reinigungskosten typischer Berufskleidung“, Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e. V.

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