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Spreading maintenance costs over five years: the § 82b EStDV election

Last updated: 25 August 2026 · Reading time approx. 8 minutes

A new roof, a new heating system, a full window replacement: for German tax purposes these are Erhaltungsaufwand – maintenance expenditure – and therefore deductible in full straight away. That is sometimes exactly the problem. If the deduction lands in a year where there is little left to reduce, part of its effect evaporates. § 82b EStDV therefore gives landlords an election: larger maintenance expenditure may be spread evenly over two to five years. This article shows when the election is open, when it pays off, and where it ends unexpectedly.

This article deals exclusively with the law in Germany. Austria and Switzerland have their own, different rules for spreading maintenance costs on let property, which are not covered here.

What § 82b EStDV allows

The default rule sits in § 11 (2) sentence 1 EStG and is known as the cash-outflow principle: expenses “are to be deducted for the calendar year in which they were paid”. Pay in November and you deduct in that same year – even if the tradespeople only finish in February.

§ 82b (1) sentence 1 EStDV expressly breaks that rule. A taxpayer may spread larger expenditure on the maintenance of buildings “evenly over two to five years, by way of derogation from § 11 (2) of the Act”. Three points matter here:

The total does not change: the same sum is deducted in the end, only across several assessment periods instead of one.

The conditions in detail

ConditionWhat the wording requiresSource
Not business assetsAt the time the maintenance expenditure is incurred, the building must not form part of business assets (Betriebsvermögen).§ 82b (1) sentence 1 EStDV
Predominantly residentialThe floor area of the rooms serving residential purposes must exceed half of the building's total usable area.§ 82b (1) sentence 2 EStDV
Garages count inGarages belonging to the building count as residential regardless of actual use, as long as they hold no more than one car per apartment; spaces beyond that never count as residential.§ 82b (1) sentences 3 and 4 EStDV
Maintenance, not productionOnly maintenance expenditure may be spread. Anything classified as production costs is written off through depreciation instead, not under this provision.§ 82b (1) sentence 1 EStDV

On a mixed-use property, the “predominantly residential” test is where it tips. Area decides, not rental income: a building with a shop on the ground floor and two apartments above may pass or fail depending on how the square metres fall – not on where the rent comes from.

What counts as “larger” maintenance expenditure?

Honesty is called for here: the text of the regulation names no monetary limit. It speaks of “larger expenditure” without putting a figure on it. Any specific euro threshold you find online should therefore be treated as a rule of thumb, not as the content of the law. In practice the question rarely arises: with an invoice big enough for spreading to be worth considering, nobody argues about the term.

The worked example

A let apartment building, held for years. In 2026 the roof is renovated for €45,000 – undisputed maintenance expenditure. Before that measure the property produced an annual surplus of €12,000 (rental income less all other income-related expenses).

YearImmediate deductionSpread over five years
202612,000 − 45,000 = −33,000 €12,000 − 9,000 = 3,000 €
202712,000 €3,000 €
202812,000 €3,000 €
202912,000 €3,000 €
203012,000 €3,000 €
Total 2026–203015,000 €15,000 €

Both columns end at the same total. Spreading creates no additional deduction – it moves it. The only difference is which year's other income the reduction meets.

When spreading pays off – and when it does not

The immediate deduction is better when the loss in the year of payment meets high other income: the full amount then works where your personal tax rate is highest. Spreading is better when the immediate deduction would run into a void – because other income happens to be low that year, or because other properties are already producing losses.

Nothing is lost either way: negative income not offset in the year it arises is carried back by § 10d EStG to the two preceding assessment periods, or carried forward to later years; the carry-back can be waived on application under § 10d (1) sentence 6 EStG. But the loss deduction only helps once the loss already exists, whereas § 82b EStDV avoids it in the first place. Which year actually has deduction capacity is a question of the property's running numbers – see calculating the cash flow of a property.

The emergency exit: sale, business assets, end of letting

§ 82b (2) sentence 1 EStDV covers the most important special case: if the building is sold during the spreading period, the part of the maintenance expenditure not yet taken into account must be deducted as an income-related expense in the year of the sale. Sentence 2 extends the same treatment to two further events – contribution of the building to business assets, and the case where the building is “no longer used to generate income”, for example on a switch to owner-occupation.

In practice this means two things. First, the balance is not lost on a sale, it is merely bunched together. Second, spreading is a poor idea when a sale is already on the horizon: the bunched remainder then lands in a year you no longer control. Anyone planning an exit should look at the spreading period and the ten-year speculation period on a property sale together.

The wording names exactly these three events. Inheritance is not among them – what happens to a spreading period still running when the owner dies has been decided by the Federal Fiscal Court; see "What the courts have decided" below.

Co-ownership: all or none

Where the building is owned by several persons, § 82b (3) EStDV requires the maintenance expenditure to be “spread by all owners over the same period”. In a community of heirs or a jointly purchased property, one owner therefore cannot spread while another deducts immediately. That coordination belongs before the first tax return, not in the appeal afterwards.

Spreading does not defeat the 15% rule

A common misconception: spreading the cost over five years gets you around the threshold for acquisition-related production costs. It does not. Under § 6 (1) no. 1a EStG, renovation and modernisation expenditure incurred within three years of acquisition counts as production costs where it exceeds 15% of the acquisition cost of the building, net of VAT. The test attaches to the expenditure itself, not to the year it is deducted.

The order is therefore unambiguous: first establish whether there is maintenance expenditure at all – only then does the question of spreading arise. If a measure falls under the threshold, it is written off through building depreciation and § 82b EStDV never comes into play. The distinction is covered in detail in the article on acquisition-related production costs and the 15% rule.

Redevelopment areas and listed buildings: two separate provisions

Alongside § 82b EStDV, the Income Tax Act contains two further spreading rules that are often overlooked because they sit elsewhere:

The decisive difference: neither provision requires predominantly residential use, but both require official agreement. Owners of a listed building or a property in a redevelopment area should therefore check these routes first. The exit rules run in parallel: § 11a (2) and (3) EStG apply accordingly under § 11b sentence 3 EStG. How maintenance expenditure on a listed building relates to the far larger write-off of the construction measures themselves is set out in the article on Denkmal-AfA under § 7i EStG.

What the courts have decided

The regulation expressly names three exit events and not the owner's death – that is exactly the gap the Federal Fiscal Court (Bundesfinanzhof, BFH) closed.

BFH, judgment of 10 November 2020 – IX R 31/19

If the taxpayer dies during the spreading period, the outstanding balance of maintenance expenditure spread under § 82b EStDV does not pass to the heirs. Instead it is deducted in full from the deceased's own return – for the assessment period of death, as an income-related expense against their income from letting and leasing. The BFH treated death as equivalent to the three events the wording already names (sale, contribution to business assets, end of income generation); a contrary administrative instruction (R 21.1 (6) sentences 2 and 3 EStR 2012) no longer applies. For the heirs this means: the deceased's tax return for the year of death carries the full remaining balance, not just the pro-rata annual amount – and the community of heirs does not continue the spreading.

Frequently asked questions

Can I decide differently for each measure?

§ 82b (1) sentence 1 EStDV attaches to the respective expenditure, not to the property as a whole. This year's roof and next year's windows are therefore looked at separately. For a jointly owned building, subsection 3 still applies: for the same expenditure, all owners must choose the same period.

Does the election apply to an owner-occupied home?

Not in practice. Maintenance expenditure only has an effect as an income-related expense under § 9 (1) sentence 1 EStG where income is generated – for letting, therefore, via § 21 EStG. Without income generation there is nothing to spread.

What happens if I switch to owner-occupation mid-period?

Then § 82b (2) sentence 2 EStDV applies: the building is no longer used to generate income, and the outstanding balance must be deducted in that year.

Do I have to commit when the invoice arrives?

No, the decision is made with the tax return for the year of payment. Do file the receipts so the allocation is still traceable years later: the spreading period runs up to four years beyond the year of payment, and the annual amount has to reappear in every one of those returns.

File receipts today, find them again in four years

RenoDiary collects invoices per property in a digital vault and prepares the income-related expenses year by year for Anlage V – including amounts that come from a spreading period still running.

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Sources

This article offers general orientation and does not replace individual tax or legal advice within the meaning of § 3 StBerG. What governs is the wording of the law as applicable at the time, the circumstances of the individual case, and advice from a person authorised to give it.