(2023)
How must I provide evidence of the costs for a health treatment?
You must provide evidence of the expenses for your convalescence or rehabilitation treatment. The tax office also requires you to prove the medical necessity of the treatment. For this, you need a medical certificate from the public health officer or the approval for cost coverage from the Medical Service of the Health Insurance. It is important that the certificate is issued before you start the treatment.
Once you have a certificate from the public health officer recommending a specific measure or medication, collect the receipts, even for other medical expenses. Only at the end of the year will it be clear how much you have actually spent on treatments, remedies, or therapies. The treatment costs are combined with expenses for other general extraordinary burdens such as medical expenses, divorce costs, or funeral costs.
You can deduct from tax, without limit, any amount exceeding your reasonable personal burden. Depending on income, marital status, and number of children, the reasonable personal burden is between one and seven percent of the total income.
You can use our overview to determine whether it is worthwhile to include an entry in the tax return, as the tax office automatically deducts your reasonable burden from the actual expenses. Only the remaining amount has a tax-reducing effect.
The certificate must contain sufficiently specific information about the spa location in accordance with § 64 para. 1 sentence 1 no. 2a EStDV. The statement "in a tropical climate" alone is not sufficient to determine the spa location. The certificate must show that the taxpayer is ill and that a stay at a specific spa location is medically indicated for a certain period. The public health officer must specify in their statement where exactly a climate treatment is medically indicated due to the existing illnesses (FG Münster, judgement of 23.2.2022, 7 K 2261/20 E).
