Does having a home in Germany make you tax resident?

Germany's rules sit in the Fiscal Code and operate separately. Satisfy either and you are subject to unlimited tax liability.

Wohnsitz asks whether you have a dwelling in Germany under circumstances indicating you will keep and use it. It is about availability and intention rather than time: a flat kept for your use can establish residence even if you are rarely there. There is no minimum number of days, and registering or not registering with the authorities does not settle it.

Gewöhnlicher Aufenthalt is the presence test, and it is broader than the six-month figure suggests. The statutory question is whether you are staying under circumstances showing your presence is not merely temporary — which can be satisfied on a shorter stay. On top of that sits a deeming rule: a continuous stay of more than six months always counts, from its first day, with short interruptions disregarded, and it can span the turn of a calendar year.

That deeming rule has a carve-out people rely on without knowing it exists. It does not apply where the stay is taken exclusively for visiting, recuperation, medical treatment or similar private purposes and lasts no more than one year. A seven-month stay purely to recuperate or visit family is therefore not automatically caught.

This is the distinction most often missed. The German day route is about a continuous stay, not a total.

Someone who spends 200 days in Germany across a year in several separate trips is not automatically caught by the deeming rule, because no single stay ran past six months — though the underlying "not merely temporary" test can still apply on the facts. Someone who stays seven months straight is caught by the deeming rule, unless the private-purpose carve-out applies. Two travel patterns with the same annual total can land on opposite sides.

Short absences within a stay — a holiday, a work trip — are disregarded rather than resetting the clock, so leaving briefly to break the period does not work the way people assume.

• Abgabenordnung § 8 — Wohnsitz (residence)
• Abgabenordnung § 9 — Gewöhnlicher Aufenthalt (habitual abode)