In future, child benefit in Germany is to be paid automatically following the birth of a child, without parents having to submit an application. The Bundestag passed this resolution at its sitting on 9 July 2026. The law is due to come into force on 1 January 2027. In future, following the birth of a child, the registry office will automatically inform the Federal Central Tax Office, which in turn will notify the family benefits office. The family benefits office will then transfer the child benefit to the parents without the need for any application procedure.
A recent study by economics professors Steffen Altmann (University of Würzburg), Andreas Grunewald (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management) and Jonas Radbruch (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Thanks to the automated child benefit process, parents save an average of almost four hours – equivalent to around 80 per cent less effort compared with the previous procedure. For young parents who have to juggle various administrative and family responsibilities following the birth of a child, any time saved is a bonus.
Simplifications for tax returns too
The three professors also see great potential for further simplifications in other automated processes, such as tax returns. Pilot projects based on the Danish model are currently underway in several federal states. In these projects, the tax authorities collate most of the data on an online portal; taxpayers simply have to check the result and correct it if necessary. The researchers estimate that this model saves an average of 3.3 hours per taxpayer per year.
“If politicians want us to work more, they must also create the right conditions for this and not burden citizens with unnecessary administrative red tape,” says Jonas Radbruch, junior professor in the Microeconomics Research Group at the Faculty of Economics at Humboldt-Universität. “Pilot schemes such as the ‘The tax office now does it for you’ project – modelled on the Danish system, launched in Hesse and recently extended to other federal states – should therefore be just the beginning,” emphasises the HU researcher.
Abridged version