Cashback Tax for Self-Employed in Germany 2026: Expense Reduction or Other Income?

Credit cards hand out reward points, Amazon pays referral bonuses, banks lure you in with sign-up cash, even your office supplier kicks back 1–3%. Cashback is everywhere in 2026. For self-employed people in Germany the question is: do I have to tax this? The answer does not depend on the amount but on why you are getting the cashback.

Two kinds of cashback — two tax rules

Tax law splits cashback into two camps:

• Expense-linked cashback — you buy something (office supplies, software, a service) and the seller pays part of it back. This is not new income but a reduction of business expenses.
• Bonus cashback without a linked expense — referral bonuses, account opening rewards, app promotions with no concrete service in return. These count as other income (sonstige Einkünfte) under § 22 Nr. 3 EStG.

Expense-linked cashback: just net it against the cost

Example: you order €500 net of marketing material. Three weeks later the supplier wires back €20 cashback. In your EUR you do not book the cashback as revenue — you reduce the expense to €480. That keeps your profit, input VAT and final tax return clean.

Important: you also have to adjust the input VAT. If you reclaimed 19% on €500 (= €95), you must correct €3.80 (= 19% of €20) in the UStVA of the month the cashback arrives. Otherwise the tax office will flag it later.

Bonus cashback: the €256 threshold and its trap

Bonuses with no concrete service in return — say, €100 for referring a banking app — count as private other income. There is a Freigrenze (threshold) of €256 per year. This is not an allowance: the moment you hit €256, the entire amount becomes taxable, not just the excess. €255.99 is tax-free — €256.00 means you owe income tax on the full €256.

Important: these bonuses belong in your private tax return (Anlage SO), not in the EUR — even if the cashback lands on your business account. Book it out as a private withdrawal, otherwise you will distort the profit.

Common real-world cases

• Credit card cashback on a business card: if the card is used exclusively for business, the cashback reduces the related expenses. Mixed use must be split pro rata.
• Refer-a-friend bonus: even if received on your business account, it is private. The €256 threshold applies.
• Bank account opening bonus: if the account is purely a business account, the bonus is business revenue. Private account = other income.
• Cashback portal (Shoop, iGraal): business purchase → reduces business expense. Private purchase → not relevant for the EUR.
• Crypto cashback (e.g. Bitcoin reward on a card): book the euro value at receipt. A later sale of the coins is a private disposal.

What about the UStVA?

For expense-linked cashback you have to cut the input VAT you previously claimed — use line 67 ("input VAT from other businesses’ invoices") in the UStVA of the month the cashback arrives. Bonus cashback does not belong in the UStVA at all, because it is not VAT-able.

How to book it cleanly

Five rules for clean books:

1. Classify the source — is the cashback linked to a specific business expense?
2. If yes: cut the expense in the EUR and correct the input VAT in the same month.
3. If no: book it as a private withdrawal from the business account, declare it on Anlage SO, check the €256 threshold.
4. Archive the documents: cashback credit notes, bonus notifications, card statements.
5. Pay attention to cashback portals — many of them auto-report your earnings to the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern under PStTG once you cross 30 transactions or €2,000 per year.

Bottom line

Cashback is not a tax edge case, but it is a classic bookkeeping landmine. Booking €20 as revenue instead of cutting the expense distorts both profit and input VAT. Anyone collecting referral bonuses should check yearly whether they crossed the €256 mark. Norman with AI bookkeeping spots cashback transactions in your bank feed automatically and suggests the right booking — so the tax office finds nothing you missed.