Health insurance and tax returns

Your tax return benefits

The Citizen Relief Act enables health insurance companies to transmit data electronically to the tax authorities. By reporting your paid and reimbursed contributions, bonus and premium payments, and compensation payments, the conditions are created for you to claim all payments in your tax return. This is because the tax office only recognizes data transmitted electronically.
Here you can find out everything you need to know about reporting to the tax authorities. If you have any further questions, please contact us – preferably via our contact form. We will call you back as soon as possible to answer your questions.

Tax information on reports of refunded bonuses

Health insurance companies are no longer required to distinguish in their reports to the tax authorities whether the bonuses were financed by the insured persons themselves or not. Only bonus reimbursements exceeding a total of €150 in the respective tax year need to be reported. However, you have the option of requesting a summary of your reimbursed bonuses for the 2025 tax year from us. After submitting these documents, the tax office will decide whether bonuses financed by you will be taken into account for tax purposes.

Our tip for bonus payments over €150: In the tax year in which you submit your bonuses, submit an invoice whose value corresponds at least to the bonus payments. This will convert your bonuses into tax exemptions. We will then not have to report anything to the tax authorities.

Procedure for registering with the SBK Bonus Scheme

2024

Participation in the SBK Bonus Scheme

2025

Submission of your collected bonuses and payment by SBK

The date of payment alone is decisive for tax allocation.

2026

Exemption rule above €150

Bonuses per insured person that exceed this amount are reported to the tax office.

Tax information on the SBK deductible rate

Due to tax law requirements, we report the maximum possible premium to the tax authorities. It is irrelevant whether

the full premium was paid out,

the premium was partially paid out and offset against benefits claimed,

the premium was offset in full against benefits, or

the benefits claimed exceeded the amount of the premium and the health insurance fund reclaimed benefits.

Timeline for reporting the SBK deductible rate:

2024: Participation in the SBK deductible tariff

2025: Settlement of the SBK deductible tariff and distribution of premiums in August 2025

2026: Notification of the maximum possible premium for each tariff level to the tax office in January 2026
All information on the SBK deductible tariff can be found here.

Information on reports to the tax office

We report the following data to the tax office:

Paid and reimbursed contributions to voluntary health and long-term care insurance

Bonus payments (Bonus payments of up to €150 per insured person are not reported

Premium payments

Compensation payments

The tax office only accepts data transmitted electronically in your tax return. Therefore, our data transmission is a prerequisite for you to be able to claim all amounts in your tax return.

Reporting periods

In January of each year, we report the amounts paid and refunded in the previous year.

Example: In January 2026, all amounts paid and refunded for the period from January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2025, will be reported to the tax authorities.

Contributions offset against contribution credits in the report

Due to requirements imposed by the tax authorities, all health insurance funds report contribution credits resulting from contribution corrections that have been offset against contributions spanning multiple years. In the reports, the offsetting is shown under “Reimbursed contributions” and “Contributions paid.”

Please contact your tax advisor, an income tax assistance association, or the tax office if you would like to know how this affects your tax return.

Time of reporting

We always send the reports to your tax office in the second week of January. You will subsequently receive tax documentation of your reported contributions, premiums, and income replacement benefits. This means you always have an overview of the data available to the tax office.

Our tip: Are you already registered with Meine SBK? In Meine SBK, you can easily access your mail from SBK at any time. You can find out more about Meine SBK and how to register here.

Entering the reported amounts in your tax return

In order to be able to deduct health insurance contributions, these must generally be entered in the “Pension expenses” section of your tax return.

Please note: We are not permitted to provide any information on tax law. If you have any questions in this regard, please contact your tax advisor, the tax office, or a wage tax assistance association.

The data is transmitted electronically to the Central Allowance Authority for Pension Assets (Zentrale Zulagenstelle für Altersvermögen, or ZfA). From there your data is sent to the Federal Central Tax Office for verification and then forwarded to the responsible tax office.

Only contributions that you yourself have paid to SBK are reported to the tax office.
The following types of contributions are reported:

Statutory health insurance contributions – without sickness benefit entitlement

Statutory health insurance contributions – with sickness benefit entitlement

Additional contributions for statutory health insurance

Statutory nursing care insurance contributions

We do not report contributions paid by other bodies, such as by your employer or a paying agent. These contributions will be reported to the tax office separately by these other bodies.

Reporting bonus payments for family members

If a relative insured through family insurance receives a payment through the Bonus Scheme, this reimbursement has to be assigned to the main insurant, whose membership is the basis for the family insurance. Important to know: this rule applies even if the reimbursement is paid directly to the family member’s own bank account, for example.

If your family member’s insurance status changes during the year

If a relative insured through family insurance starts a job during the year and is therefore required to have statutory insurance for themselves, the bonus they receive is reported under the status applicable at the time the bonus was paid. Example: a child insured through their father’s family insurance receives a bonus payment of €50.00 on 2 February 2022. The child starts working as a trainee on 1 August 2022 and is therefore required to have their own statutory insurance. The bonus payment is reported to the tax office on the father’s account, because the child was insured through the family insurance at the time of the transaction.

All of your payments and reimbursements for contributions occurring within a calendar year are reported to the tax office. If you pay contributions in advance, the paid contributions are reported to the tax office, whereby the payments are compared against your current contribution amount and excess payments are recorded for future obligations. Important to know: the tax office only recognises advance payments amounting to no more than three times the annual contribution.

Our tip: If you intend to make advance payments, please speak with us. We will help you determine how much you can pay in advance while avoiding ‘overpaying’ beyond the three-year limit.

If a tax audit of your employer, for example, results in SBK reimbursing you for insurance and benefits expenses such as those for

Health insurance

Nursing care insurance

Pension insurance

Unemployment insurance

these reimbursements must be reported to the tax office through what is known as the MZ30 procedure, which is a compulsory notification process.

Until the 2018 tax year, health insurance providers only reported contributions and rewards to the tax office for customers who paid their contributions themselves if these customers had provided consent for data transmission. As of the 2019 tax year, SBK, like all other health insurance providers, has been obligated to report contributions and rewards electronically to the tax office for all customers – even those who have not provided consent for data transmission.

The legal basis for this is the second Act harmonising data protection law with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and implementing Directive (EU) 2016/680, which was adopted on 20 November 2019.

Important to know: The tax office provides health insurance providers with customers’ missing tax IDs upon request in an automated system, so that these providers are able to report data to the tax office accordingly.